@JosephWright Pounds and ounces always drive me crazy when I look for recipes online. Good that at least google has the converter. However, even worse are "cups" and "teaspoons" etc. -- I've got five sizes of cups and 3 sizes of teaspoons!
@yo' The thing about imperial units is they are 'just right' for recipes. For example, for a sponge I need 8/8/8/4 butter/sugar/flour/eggs, all nice small integers
@yo' In a domestic context people tend to have teaspoons and dessert spoons. A tablespoon is for serving food so is too big to be used for eating, so it's not that common to actually have one.
@JosephWright well, that's clear. I actually have (besides wooden spoons) 3 quite different spoon, which in the Czech language are soup spoon, tea spoon and coffee spoon
@JosephWright they are rare here as well, I've got them in place of the ridiculous plastic stirring thingies
to me it appears that your table spoon is really our soup spoon. Well, our soups are liquids with a lot of stuff inside rather than cream soups (which are more silimar to our sauces), so you need a larger spoon :-)
@yo' -- sorry to disappoint you, but "tablespoon" is not badly defined. you just need to find the right set of u.s. measuring spoons (which, i admit, is probably not at all easy where you are). and in u.s. measure, 4 Tbsp (really need cap T here!) = 1/4 cup.
@barbarabeeton yes, this starts to be ridiculous IMHO; I've seen this "set of measuring spoons" and I came to conclusion that the surface tension makes them imprecise beyond usefulness.
@JosephWright -- what's really funny about coffee spoons is that there's one restaurant here where they keep serving one with a cup of greek coffee (where "greek coffee" is pretty much the same as turkish coffee, i.e., with a lot of sludge in the bottom).
@JosephWright -- but this is a case where i wouldn't even try to use anything but a real measuring spoon.
@yo' I've seen those: really odd and inefficient (lots of packets rather than a jar). Then again, I'm regarded as a bit odd in the UK as I don't like self-raising flour (pre-mixed flour and baking powder).
@yo' -- here, baking powder comes in cans of varying sizes. i think 8 oz is the usual "home size". (it's been a long time since i baked something that called for it.) 8 oz = 1 cup, dry measure.
@yo' -- if you grow up with it, you're confused by any other system. i had to learn how to cook "by weight". that's even more unaccustomed than converting between kilos and pounds.
@yo' -- yup. but as i said, if you learn it with your mother watching over your shoulder, it becomes second nature, and learning a different system takes careful attention.
@barbarabeeton yeah I understand. Well, we've got three types of recipes: (1) the ones where it quite doesn't matter, (2) the ones where things are measured by weight, (3) the ones where things so much depend on the qualities of the ingredients that you can't really write down precise values.
@yo' -- the last instance is exemplified by what i've heard as the "gullup" school of cooking -- that's the sound that the "correct" (desired) amount of molasses makes being poured out of the bottle. later, all ...
