At least metric recipes are actually reproducible, not like the tablespoons and cups compounding rounding errors and estimates of the imperial “system”.
For instance, the imperial gallon is about 4.5 liters, while the U.S. gallon is only about 3.78 liters.
The imperial system used to be much worse... there were separate gallons for wine, ale, grain, etc. About the only vestige of this is in barrels, where a barrel of beer is not the same size as a barrel of oil.
There's also an avoirdupois system, which is similar, but once again, not identical, with the imperial and U.S. systems, and the troy system used for precious metals and things of that nature.