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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
Quote:
Quote:
The problem with that monetary system is not that it wsn't base ten; it's that it wasn't base anything consistent.
Four farthings to the penny.
Twelve pence to the shilling.
Twenty shillings to the pound.
Before laughing too much at the mote that used to be in someone else's eye, we should consider the some of the logs in our own, e.g.
3 teaspoons in a tablespoon
2 tablespoons in an ounce
8 ounces in a cup
2 cups in a pint
2 pints in a quart
4 quarts in a gallon
What's 17.5% of 3 quarts, 1 pint, 1 cup, 3 tbl, 2 tsp? Please answer in drams. 
lol! Great post, Myr. You could also mention the one that we both still suffer from - ok, we don't use rods, perches, chains and all that old guff now, but we still have the ridiculous legacy of inches, feet, yards, miles...! Even worse, in the UK we have a typical British compromise: my mum bought some material for upholstery work, and it was sold as 11 metres of 56" width! 
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 11,613 |
And here I've been thinking that the U.S. was being dangerously progressive ever since they started selling Cokes in two-liter bottles...
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Joined: Jan 2002
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veteran
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veteran
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Lousy memory coming back to haunt me. I was on our HS math team.
We had a problem once, a small piece of which required us to know how many teaspoons in a tablespoon. I had never learned this in math or any other part of my school education. However, being a momma's boy, I was always in the kitchen and had asked my mother who told me that 4 tsp = 1 Tsp. So I missed a sure thing.
Anyways, I learnt the meaning of "trust, but verify."
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
I recently was part of a discussion with a native of Ireland about cooking using volume instead of weight measurements. He ended up with a gift of measuring spoons. Now I'm saving butter wrappers, to share the magic of measurement-marked packaging.
Leading to the revelation for some of the meaning of a "stick of butter."
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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*this link brought to you by the TTCAAC** committee***
... and that codes for what protein, did you say? The one that makes butter, maybe?
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 427
addict
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addict
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 427 |
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Is there no equivalent in Spain, Marianna? In Brazil we had tea cup (xícara de chá) and coffee cup (xícara de café) for cup and quarter-cup.
Not really, as we mostly see weight measurements in recipes. That's why the kids interpret "cup" as "any cup", and they are surprised that there is a standard.
Fortunately, for this situation we have found an incredibly useful link!
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Weight measures are, of course, far more accurate.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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You'd think so, but most kitchen scales are not that sensitive.
For example, in a recipe for Fungible pudding we once got, (thank you Mav) the measures were in weight. I used a kitchen scale and found that I could add tiny bits and the arrow wouldn't change noticeably.
I think that this non-preciseness would be comparable to volume measures...like when your tablespoon is a little over-filled and the liquid-pressure (I know there is a name for this but can't recall it) is keeping the tablespoon from overflowing.
I did notice the recipe took longer to prepare with the scale though. There's the whole, "add a bit, look, add a bit, look, ooops, remove a tiny bit, ooops, removed too much, add iota. O.k. that's good," thing you have to go through.
With measuring cups and spoons, you scoop, scrape top with a straight-edged knife and voilà, you're done.
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Joined: Sep 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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yeah, true bel; but I always find that the first time of trying a recipe - my favourite approach is to read several recipes and then abstract a general sense of what I'm aiming at. I hate the anal thing of 53g of this and .468cl of that!
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
Quote:
... I hate the anal thing of 53g of this and .468cl of that!
What's 17.5% of the net total? I gotta tip my scale.
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