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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

I’ve also digitized some recipes and had to deal with “1 can” or “1 bar” without size included. Some things aren’t sold like that anymore or their size has fluctuated. In the example about it was for a candy bar pound cake and “1 can of Hershey’s syrup” isn’t a thing anymore that I can tell and even if it was, I had no clue the size. Same with “1 Hershey’s bar”, uhh, no clue what 1 standard bar was then. Thankfully my mom was able to fill in the gaps but let this be a lesson, if you have family recipes you love, get it written down with actual units, you’ll thank yourself later.

Next on my list is converting everything to mass where possible. It’s so much easier to measure with a kitchen scale than it is to wonder “did I pack the X in too tight or too loose into this cup?”.

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Even regional differences in things.

If you say "one bar of butter", "one stick of butter", and "one pat of butter", these can all refer to three different things or the same thing, depending on where you are located. East Coast and West Coast US butter are sold in different size blocks (though both are "8 tbsp") however sometimes you'll find 4tbsp sticks on the west coast that look like 1/2 an East Coast stick that I've heard called pats.

Then Europe comes along and all the fancy European butters are made in 250g blocks, which are bigger than the 110g sticks but smaller than the package of 4 of them! This always confused my European friends when I'd say "oh I'll toss in a stick of butter" because they thought I was adding a quarter kilo of butter.

Meanwhile, here in Canada I've never seen "sticks of butter", only the large bricks. They're the same size as American ones, and labeled as 454g, but I only recently found out that in some places in the US, they cut them in fours. Before that, the phrase didn't mean anything to me, and I thought it referred to throwing the whole brick in. The smaller 250g packages also exist, but they're rare.

I can't guarantee that the sticks don't exist anywhere, but I've lived in several cities all over the country and I've never spotted anything like that

The 250 g half-bricks are very common. It's how the foo-foo frilly butter is sold ("cultured" butter, imported French butter with 94% fat content, butter made exclusively from milk squeezed from grass-fed cows, etc) because no one is willing to pay $15.00 for a pound of butter but they'll pay $8.00 for a half pound.

  I only recently found out that in some places in the US,
  they cut them in fours

That's pretty much the standard in the US. It's common enough that there's a bit of an east/west divide as to how the quarters are shaped. When I worked in a grocery store we'd also sell individual quarters (but I never actually saw anyone buy them as such).

Some American butter is wrapped in wax paper as regular sticks with measurement markers on it so that it is easy to measure. Plenty of large bricks though.

And here we use the markers to know how many grams that part is… how silly of us!

I’ve seen them in stores in Canada, but they’re usually more expensive than the 454g blocks. Expensive enough that it’s usually better to buy the block and portion it as needed.

Typical Americana. Cutting up and packaging in extra foil what could simply be sold as a larger brick.

See also, milk bags.

Bricks won't fit in our butter trays. And it'd be an ordeal to open a brick, quarter it, then put the opened 3/4 of the brick back into cold storage until needed again.

Our butter isn't wrapped in foil, each stick is wrapped in wax paper and the whole thing is boxed in thin cardboard.

fancy butter is sometimes in foil, https://www.kerrygoldusa.com for example

Here in the UK, there's a trend of selling 200g blocks for certain brands that ruin recipes. We have to be careful to avoid those and stick to the 250g ones. Yes, I know we could cut 50g of another block but then we'd need to measure, and we'd have an open brick to keep. It steals part of the joy of baking, forcing us to think instead of feel.

Blame the European regulators who decided that it was no longer necessary to have standard pack sizes.

Pack sizes were regulated in 1975 for volume measures (wine, beer, spirits, vinegar, oils, milk, water, and fruit juice) and in 1980 for weights (butter, cheese, salt, sugar, cereals [flour, pasta, rice, prepared cereals], dried fruits and vegetables, coffee, and a number of other things). In 2007, all of that was repealed - and member states were now forbidden from regulating pack sizes!

I think the rationale was that now the unit price (price per unit of measurement) was mandatory to display, consumers would still know which of two different packs on the same shelf was better value. But standard pack sizes don't just provide value-for-money comparisons, as this article shows.

Ironically it seems (from memory, I've not researched it deeply) that continental butter has not changed from 250g, whereas the British brands have moved first to 200g. I could understand if they switched to 225g as essentially a half-pound block, but 200g isn't any closer to an useful Imperial measure than 250g.

> but then we'd need to measure

Most butter here (and in a number of other countries) have measuring lines on the pack itself in 50g increments, so while I agree with you it's a nuisance to have an open one to deal with, the measurement part is usually a matter of using a knife along the marked line...

If the "certain brands" you refer to don't have those measuring lines, though, then a pox on them...

I'm not sure about that, I've resisted buying those brands and it seems poor form to open them in the supermarket just to check.

Do people here not always have an open pack of butter in their fridge?

We have salted butter for the table, and unsalted for baking. We don't bake often enough to want unopened packs if we can avoid it.

Pre-salted butter is another weird American thing that's completely unnecessary. Butter is also great for cooking and you can keep it for months in the fridge without issues.

It's not really an American thing. It's a pretty wild mix which regions use which how much all across the world (well, across places that commonly use butter obviously)

Salted butter is a weird American thing?

It's much easier finding unsalted butter in the US than in Portugal.

In fact, unsalted butter has been the default everywhere I've lived in the US.

Edit: not to mention, say, salted butter being a point of pride for Britany.

It's about 50/50 here in the UK. Not at all weird, it's butter for different purposes.

For my part: Only around christmas-time, as it's the only time I bake.

Another dimension we have in France: most butter in 82% fat, but if are not careful you might buy so-called butter with much lower fat. Awful taste on morning toasts, ruined pastries.

82% seems the norm here too, good to know this. Anything lower is labelled 'spread' (based on a very quick search, maybe not always true here). Oddly specific, so maybe there's regulation at play. We prefer French butter for the quality and because it comes in the correct size.

>bigger than the 110g sticks

There are four 110g sticks per package because each one is one quarter of the classic one pound (454g) package of butter, rounded down.

The European equivalent is a 125g package, which is flatter and wider than your square-profile 110g sticks.

The 125 g package tends to be exclusive for more expensive brands though, or special stuff like salted butter. 250 g is the basic European packaging unit of butter, with the occasional 500 g for margarine.

> If you say "one bar of butter", "one stick of butter", and "one pat of butter", these can all refer to three different things or the same thing, depending on where you are located. East Coast and West Coast US butter are sold in different size blocks (though both are "8 tbsp") however sometimes you'll find 4tbsp sticks on the west coast that look like 1/2 an East Coast stick that I've heard called pats.

Wat. Never in my life have I seen butter in the (mostly western) US sold in anything other than 1/4 lb sticks. There are long, skinny sticks and short, fat sticks, but they're always 1/4 lb. If you say a "pat" of butter, you're getting roughly a 1/2 Tbsp of butter from me. Definitely not half a stick!

Midwest, East Coast, and South I've seen some 1/2lb or 1lb blocks for fancier butters sometimes. But a pat of butter was definitely 1/4-1/2 tbsp of butter in the midwest - depending on if for toast (less) or for baking (exactly 1/2).

I've not heard "pat" used as a serious unit of volume since childhood though. In fact I rarely hear the word pat in relation to butter at all anymore.

I'd say (from northern Europe) that 500 g [1] is a standard pack of butter, even though they've also added the smaller "half packs" of 250 g. For professional use, there's also the full kilogram. Whoa that has got to be expensive these days.

[1]: https://www.arla.se/produkter/svenskt-smor/

One recipe in my family calls for butter "the size of two walnuts".

In Italy this is a fairly common expression.

I've typically (only?) seen it on savory recipes though. For cakes and cookies you'd have quantities in grams.

Also the tbsp and fluid ounce differ by 4% in the UK vs USA. This offsets the nominal 25% difference in pints, with UK pints having 20 oz and US pints having 16, closing the gap a bit to an actual 20.095% between the pints.

> Same with “1 Hershey’s bar”, uhh, no clue what 1 standard bar was then. Thankfully my mom was able to fill in the gaps but let this be a lesson, if you have family recipes you love, get it written down with actual units, you’ll thank yourself later.

This will break in other ways; the makeup of a candy bar changes over time as ingredients rise and fall in price.

Stephen Jay Gould's "Phyletic Size Decrease in Hershey Bars", in "Hen's teeth and horse's toes" at https://archive.org/details/hensteethhorsest00step/page/314/... shows the size trend from the 2.0 ounces of 1960 to the the 1.2 ounce of 1980, when it was published.

The entire point of my comment is that besides changes in size, there are also changes in ingredients.

Implied by the Devil Dog mentioned later in the essay:

> And I will say this for the good folks in Hershey, Pa. It’s still the same damned good chocolate, what’s left of it. A replacement of whole by broken almonds 1s the only compromise with quality I’ve noticed, while I shudder to think what the “‘creme”’ inside a Devil Dog is made of these days.

Also, Hershey's "chocolate" tastes of vomit due to butyric acid from lipolysis

Thanks for the explanation. Hershey's taste was really a disappointment on my first visit to the US. As a dark chocolate eater I still can't understand how this called chocolate.

Britisher here. I was disgusted to discover this when a colleague brought some from the US. I don't understand how anyone eats / ate this stuff.

My wife worked for a company that does this (for many large brands that you know of. Yes it always surprised me that they even farmed this out, they really only do marketing themselves anymore). Was a real eye opener.

What's even easier than measuring with a kitchen scale is just throwing the entire can in and calling it good. That's often why these recipes used "boxes", "cans", etc as units of measurement in the first place. By converting to standard units you're increasing the amount of effort needed to actually make the dish. It might be more in keeping with the spirit of the recipe to just substitute similarly-sized cans or boxes, even if it's not quite the same taste. It depends on your priorities I suppose. (Though either way it's probably good to include units for the sake of clarity and reproducibility: e.g. "one 16 oz can" rather than "1 can".)

Agreed, I wouldn't say XXXX grams of Hershey's chocolate syrup, but I do want to know what size "a can" means.

On the other hand, for things that you would always measure (or need to do to sizes changing) like flour or sugar, I want that in grams for easy measuring. Even chocolate bars, might be easier to just say how much you need since getting exactly what you are looking for might be difficult/impossible.

RE: finding what "1 can" or "1 bar" was, you may be able to scour archive.org for scans of old magazines and newspapers to see advertisements or product listings for the respective product? At least, that's one route I'd consider

In 1981, the Betty Crocker Supreme Fudge Brownie Mix included a 5.5 oz can of Hershey's syrup. In 1949 you could get a 5 oz can when you purchase 2 quarts of ice cream. https://archive.org/details/mansfield-news-journal-1949-08-1...

It came in multiple sizes. 5 oz is probably the "small can" mentioned at https://archive.org/details/trinity-parish-of-newton-centre/... .

There was also a 16 oz can, https://archive.org/details/escanaba-daily-press-1964-12-10/... and https://archive.org/details/childrenasconsum0000mcne/page/11... and https://archive.org/details/The_Times_News_Idaho_Newspaper_1... and https://archive.org/details/cupl_004738/mode/2up?q=%22can+of... .

And an 8 pound can (!) for food services. https://archive.org/details/foodloversguidet0000harr_d5o7/pa...

So what you're saying is that it's probably 8 pounds, right?

wow haha, nice finds! that's awesome.

I remember the cans of Hershey's syrup, you opened them with a church key. This was the same era of oil cans with the special opener/spout you had to use. BTW, there's an unopened can of it on ebay for $25, claimed to be from the '60s, and is 5 1/2 ounces.

> It’s so much easier to measure with a kitchen scale than it is to wonder “did I pack the X in too tight or too loose into this cup?”.

Here in the UK, I get irrationally annoyed by seeing recipes that use "U.S." measurements. A "cup" is mostly meaningless to me as I've got lots of different size cups and as you state, it's not a consistent way to measure most ingredients (I can understand it being used for liquids, but even so why not just use ml or weight). When it comes to measuring larger ingredients (e.g. apricots) then the dimensions of this platonic cup come into play and I have to start deriving the optimal (almost) sphere packing to figure out how many apricots to use.

No need for scare quotes, US customary units are a thing. A US customary cup is, at least, quite standard at 8 fluid ounces. This is more standardized than the unit of measure used in British recipes and whatnot. The issues surrounding volumetric measurements for dry goods is an entirely separate matter. 240 mL of apricots is just as useless as 1 cup of apricots.

Keep in mind it goes further than that. US customary volume units don't match up with British ones.

One British gallon is about 4.5 liters, where a US gallon is about 3.8. Quarts, pints, and cups follow, but fluid ounces are another thing. A US gallon is divided into 128 fl. oz., while a British gallon is 160. This results in a US fluid ounce of about 29.6 ml, vs. 28.4 ml for the British one, and also affects teaspoons and tablespoons.

Strictly, UK teaspoons are 5 ml and tablespoons 15 ml. The metric tablespoons already used in Europe were probably close enough to half an Imperial fluid ounce for it not to matter for most purposes.

My kids' baby bottles were labelled with measurements in metric (30 ml increments) and in both US and Imperial fluid ounces. The cans of formula were supplied with scoops for measuring the powder, which were also somewhere close to 2 tablespoons/one fluid ounce (use one scoop per 30 ml of water). There are dire warnings about not varying the concentration from the recommended amount, but I assume that it's not really that precise within 1-2% - more about not varying by 10-20%. My kids seem to have survived, anyway.

  Strictly, UK teaspoons are 5 ml and tablespoons 15 ml.

Well there's a rabbit hole I wasn't expecting to go down. I knew that Australian tablespoons (20 mL) were significantly different from US tablespoons. I didn't know that UK tablespoons were a whole different beast (14.2 mL), nor did I realize US tablespoons aren't quite 15 mL, and in fact my tablespoon measures are marked 15 mL. 15 mL is handily 1/16 of a US cup so it's easy enough to translate to 1/4 cup (4 tsbsp) and 1/3 cup (5 tbsp).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablespoon

> No need for scare quotes, US customary units are a thing.

I understand that other countries (probably North American ones) use the same system too, so thought I was clarifying, not scaring.

> A US customary cup is, at least, quite standard at 8 fluid ounces. This is more standardized than the unit of measure used in British recipes and whatnot

I disagree as British (or non-U.S.) recipes will use a combination of metric and/or imperial sizes depending on their age. Weighing something in grammes is easy and standardised (for most of the Earth's surface at least). Admittedly, imperial measurements can be problematic as a British pint is different to a U.S. pint and "fluid ounces" also have different definitions.

> 240 mL of apricots is just as useless as 1 cup of apricots

I agree - any sane recipe will use something like "5 apricots". I've never seen mL used for measuring whole fruit - grammes would be appropriate for mashed fruit though.

  I disagree as British (or non-U.S.) recipes will use a combination of
  metric and/or imperial sizes depending on their age.

Right, but a cup is not an imperial unit of measure and metric cups didn't really catch on in the UK. So if you're looking at an older British recipe that references cups, good luck.

  any sane recipe will use something like "5 apricots".

This is also a bad idea as common sizes for certain things change over time (e.g. some of the comments here talking about eggs). I don't eat too many apricots, but apples here can vary in size wildly even of the same variety.

Can't recall seeing any British recipe that uses cups so the difference between imperial and metric cups is irrelevant to us.

At least with something like "5 apricots", it should be obvious to the cook if they've got really small, big or varying sizes. Meanwhile, the "cup" measurement can vary depending on the order of which you put the apricots into the cup - do you put the smallest fruit in first, or the biggest?

One of my favorite dessert recipes is Dorie Greenspan's French Apple Cake. It calls for "4 large apples". The recipe is equally enjoyable with a wide range of apple mass, but the character is definitely changed depending on what you do. I think baking is a lot more flexible than most folks give it credit for, but getting more precise units helps ensure consistency from cook to cook and from batch to batch.

For reference a friend who'd expatriated to the midwest posted something about some giant apples they bought. I replied with a picture of an average apple I bought, roughly twice the size of theirs.

  Meanwhile, the "cup" measurement can vary depending on the order of which you
  put the apricots into the cup - do you put the smallest fruit in first, or
  the biggest?

Sure, volumetric measurements for solids is generally not great which is why when I transcribe recipes for my own collection I tend to weigh things out.

Yep, some recipes don't require precision, but something like a soufflé might.

Weighing things out is the correct method. What could be useful is if recipes provided the ratios of the ingredients along with error margins, so that you could easily type in an amount (e.g. 100g flour) and it'd scale the other ingredients to match. However, maybe that's overthinking it.

> This is more standardised than the unit of measure used in British recipes and whatnot.

How so?

There's no such thing as an imperial cup ergo the cup is not a standardized measurement. Within US customary units the cup is defined.

No "cups" in old British recipes I've made but there will be measures you have to look up like a "gill".

Old family recipes would just say things like "add flour" and that amount was taught face-to-face and hands-on where you added enough till it looked "right" because onions and eggs etc. were not a uniform size.

This reminds me of a boxed item I bought ages ago where the instructions were basically: cook to desired doneness, season as desired.

Also reminds me of a coworker in a restaurant in Palo Alto who, when I asked him the recipe for a dressing I needed to make, told me "ginger juice, lemon, and just make it good". It turns out there were a few other ingredients.

  No "cups" in old British recipes I've made but there will be measures
  you have to look up like a "gill".

Counterpoint:

https://oldbritishrecipes.com/collection-of-old-biscuit-reci...

And yeah, depending on how far back you're going or what sources you're using, there will be a lot of vaguely defined quantities. Glen of Glen and Friends on Youtube regularly cooks vintage recipes and gets into how things evolved over time. Most of his old cookbooks are either Canadian or American but from time to time he cooks from UK cookbooks.

It's notable with that link that old recipes mostly used weights for the ingredients and only a minority used cups

I'm sure there will be examples and my childhood memories won't be great but that link isn't a good example of British recipes.

Most of the instances of "cups" come from the "Edwardian recipes" which is a collection of international recipes including American. It includes in the preface a Table of Measures which is what you do for Brits who see "cup" and ask "what the fuck is that?"!

4 cups flour = 1 quart or 1 lb.

2 cups of butter (solid) = 1 lb.

2¹⁄₂ cups powdered sugar = 1 lb.

1 cup = ¹⁄₂ pint

1 glass = ¹⁄₂ pint

1 pint milk or water = 1 lb.

9 large eggs = 1 lb.

1 table-spoon butter = 1 oz.

1 heaping table-spoon butter = 2 ozs.

Butter the size of an egg = 2 ozs.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/68137/68137-h/68137-h.htm#Li...

Is Ambrose Heath a better example?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjIwI5Vdmds

British recipes today largely use metric units. Pre-metric recipes absolutely did use cups (although this persisted in Canada and the US more than the UK). As Glen points out none of these British cups were standardized.

> There's no such thing as an imperial cup ergo the cup is not a standardized measurement.

Which is probably part of why British recipes never say cup.

I’m in the UK too and you can buy measuring cups here easily. It doesn’t mean “a mug from your cupboard”. It _is_ a volume measurement.

I do agree it doesn’t make sense for things that aren’t fluid-like.

"Cups" are also usually labelled on measuring jugs too. I'd refuse on principle to buy a specific measuring cup.

I use the scales for everything and convert recipes to weight once I have them working.

It’s a game changer and works so much better.

Note that UK measuring cups are not exactly the same size as US measuring cups, just as US and UK gallons are not the same size. Yes, this is infuriating. Fortunately you can buy US ones over the internet, or convert it into metric like a normal person.

> It _is_ a volume measurement

Yawn.

Except there's no such thing as a "volume measurement":

   - The so-called "cups" will have different manufacturing processes, some will be a bit smaller, some will be bit larger.  Plastic cups will warp and deform with time.
   - When measuring dry materials like flour, the amount in your "cup" depends on your usage.  Are you weighing sifted flour or flour out of the bag ?  Are you accidentally/deliberately compressing the dry goods when using your cup ? (e.g. are you scooping straight from the bag of flour).
   - etc. etc. etc.

Just weight the damn ingredients using a scale. There's a reason no professional kitchen in the world uses "cups".

I fully agree that weighing is better, but if you apply your standards to weighing you'll end up concluding there's also no such thing as "weight measurement."

- The so-called "weight" will differ depending on the type of scale and how it's used. People used mechanical kitchen scales just fine even when some measured a bit less and a bit more

- While digital scales can be more accurate, accuracy can still vary, and of course the reported weight can vary depending on where an object is on the scale or how the scale is set up. (Yes, I've used a scale that wasn't on a smooth flat surface. It worked out fine.)

- "Dry materials" like flour are hygroscopic, and even though weighing is better than measuring by volume, you end up weighing the flour + water, when what you want is just the weight of the flour (e.g. you may have to consider the storage history of your flour)

- There's the ~0.4 % weight difference between the equator and the poles.

Yes, these are all very picky, but that's how your "no such thing as" comes across to someone who grew up using volume measurement in the home kitchen.

Instead, simply say that weight measurement results in more reliable and predictable cooking. Perhaps also add that cleanup can be a lot easier when ingredients don't need intermediate staging.

For casual bakers, exact precision using grams can help... Or it might not matter at all. You'd need to have everything else be as precise for it to matter. Are you weighing your eggs? Do you adjust based on the humidity of the air? Do you know all of the hot spots in your oven and is the thermometer accurate?

It's science, but ya gotta realize you arent baking a sphere in a vacuum ya know?

At least a gram is a gram is a gram everywhere in the world!

> Are you weighing your eggs?

Yes, always.

I don't know what its like where you are, but where I am you can get eggs either in mixed packets, or sorted by size.

So where I am, 1 egg != 1 egg unless you weigh it.

It doesn't matter for soufflé's or meringues. But for everything else you'll have problems if you use random sized eggs.

> Do you adjust based on the humidity of the air?

Absorption capability of flour tends to be more important.

> Do you know all of the hot spots in your oven

Put it in fan mode and reduce the temperature. Hot spot problem disappears.

Also: egg sizes standards are not universal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_egg_sizes

A nice packed cup can fit like 50% more than a very loose cup. It's a much bigger issue "exact precision".

For eggs, as long as you know the right category of egg it'll be within 10% and that's a lot less of a worry.

Professional kitchens doing environmentally-sensitive cooking are going to have climate controlled areas and tools that make that work. Your kitchen probably doesn't. Many recipes will have wildly varying demands for flour (among other things) based on humidity, ambient temperature, elevation, the water, and the flour being used. Volume estimates end up being more accurate to the process than precise weights.

We are still on the imperial system as a whole. Even within the US people who bake know weight measurement is king.

Often the precise amount doesn't really matter though. Likely it was "one can" to begin with because that's just what was convenient and not because the recipe has been optimized to that size.

I guess it depends how much you care about perfectly reproducing the exact same dish. For personal cooking I usually don't - a bit of variance is not a negative thing.

I recently made an old family recipe for carrot cake, and the cream cheese frosting called for "a box" of confectioners sugar and "a package" of cream cheese.

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