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I do a lot of my own cooking and I particularly love baking my own cakes, biscuits and bread. But I'm getting heartily fed with Americanisms and other U.S. ways of doing things being foisted upon me. If I wanted to say diaper, not nappy; purse not handbag; pants not trousers, or eat pancakes with maple syrup and bottomless cups of weak, tasteless coffee for breakfast instead of eggs, bacon, toast, marmalade washed down with a good old English cuppa, I'd go and live in New York not London.
For example, whenever I search for recipes on the Internet, or in books that are sold in English book stores, I'm increasingly finding that the ingredient measurements are in American cup sizes instead of metric measurements or better still, my beloved and much preferred imperial measurements, which are as extinct now as Aztec bars, Omo and dinosaurs. What on earth is a 'cup' anyway? Cups, as you know, come in all shapes and sizes; they're not a standard size. So how much is a cup of flour for example, for cooking purposes? A tiny espresso cup or a flippin' great mug?
I suppose there must be a standard weight measurement for an 'America's cup', but that's not much help if I'm having to translate a cup, a half cup a quarter cup into a measurement mode that I can identify with so that I can weight my ingredients more precisely on my weighing scales so that my cakes actually do rise like the phoenix from the ashes instead of winding up like round slabs of burnt biscuit and heading straight for the bin. So why don't cookbook writers print comprehensible measurements in the first place instead of forcing me to translate what to me are meaningless American cup sizes.
That won't do at all. Tut, tut!
Now that I'm back home in good old blighty and isn't the weather dreadful at the moment...etc.. I am reminded of one of Agatha Christie's mysteries, where Miss Marple quite rightly says over afternoon tea at Bertram's Hotel, when her companion tells of a recent trip to America where she was served 'muffins' but not English muffins as we know them to be: split unfruited teacakes, toasted and spread with butter; instead they were large blueberry cup cakes (like those awful spongy things you can buy in Starbucks). Miss Marple responds reproachfully' "Well, well, the Americans have a lot to answer for."
They sure do ma'am...
By: Grumpy xx
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More annoying to me are recipes made up of measures and weights, eg 2 cups of flour and 150 grams of sugar. The only sensible way is to use one measure, ie either cups or weights so I have weighed a cup of flour, cup of sugar etc so if I want 2 cups of flour I either weigh or use 2 cups. The only time I mix measures is with small 'spoon' measures, ie I don't want to weigh a tsp of salt or 2 tsp of paprika. So basically I use whatever I find convenient.
I am 'Brit' but after living overseas for many years I am bemused by people in the UK always wanting to convert everything, we buy petrol in litres but I know people who still apply some formula to convert the litres to gallons and work out mpg.
What is that all about??
However you miss the point of the "cup" system. The size of the cup you use doesn't matter, as it's about the RATIO of one ingredient to the other. This means you don't have to use scales etc, which makes life easier. Metric is probably better, but cups have their advantages too. Unless you want an exact amount made...
As an avid cook, and a Canadian living in the UK (studying toward a PhD in food), I use both systems. The weight system is great for baking, especially with digital scales, but a faff for a lot of other things, like banging out a pot of porridge in the morning (1 cup of oats to 1 cups of water).
As for encroaching Americanisms... being from Canada, I could write a book on it (esp since my wife's American!).
Anyway, there are so many recipes that use cups instead of grams and I'm frequently reaching for the back button. Another thing are these sticks of butter? What on earth is that all about?
Not only that, but there can be big differences in volume according to how you measure, ie if you spoon the ingredient into the cup, use the cup as a scoop then level off the top, scoop and pack the ingredient down etc. Very inaccurate and stupid system. I tend to scoop the ingredients into the cups then make a note of what the resulting weight is so I don't have the same hassle the next time I want to make the recipe.
As for what a cup size is, an American cup is about 237ml, but as long as you use the same set of cups for all your ingredients, everything will still have the same proportions so the exact size shouldn't matter too much.
Gargpyle