... and thus I find myself every year bringing my baffled students a cup measure, to convince them that a "cup" is not just any ole cup they might have lying around their houses...
I have a reprint of an old Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook which uses some interesting measurements, including "teacup." In addition, it will call for a quantity of butter "the size of an egg" and for the occasional "whiskey bottle full" of some liquid.
Others?
In college, my Japanese friend taught me how to make sweet and sour pork. When I wrote down the recipe (not copied, wrote--she didn't have a written one), I put to get a pork roast the size of my geology book.
other measurements i have seen in old cookbooks, include
'a knob of butter the size of a walnut"
and the trusty
"add enough salt to float an egg"
or
"until the mixture tastes 'sharp' on the tongue"
and the classic "Start with a good size hen' (how big are the bad sized hens?)
I believe it may have been Lazarus Long who opined that recipes are merely roadmaps except for those involving baking.
I always thought it was nutty that a cup of water or milk is 8 oz while a cup of coffee is only 5 oz
> cup of coffee is only 5 oz
most of them that I see are about 40 oz...
I have this old cookbook "Mrs Porter's Cookbook" with recipes from the eighteen hundreds. I love reading the thing. Where else do you find a recipe that starts...
...Catch a medium-sized turtle...
or recipes with vague quantities like "some" ... add "some" sugar and stir. How much is some??
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> cup of coffee is only 5 oz
most of them that I see are about 40 oz...
Ahh, the barrel o' coffee.
David's grandma left a recipe for plum jam doughnuts calling for "butter, an egg" meaning "a lump of butter the size of an egg"
My grandma's recipes were more along the lines of...baking powder in the deep of your palm, a small pinch of salt.
(D’la poudre ŕ pâte dans l’creux de ta main, une pincette de sel…) When I said, "but Mammie, your palm is smaller than my palm" she said, "yes, yes, but put an approximate palm, you know, about the size of a palm." [shrugging-shoulders-e]
My other grandma, Granny, on the other hand, used precise measures, but managed to burn water, so to speak, so we never asked her for recipes. She was a hoot.
My grandmother's recipes often call for a #2 can of this and a 1 lb box of that. I can never remember what the #'s mean and since a 1 lb box of that now only contains 14.5 ounces, I'm sure the can isn't going to be the right size either.
Warren Laruth, the founder of La Ruth's restaurant in Gretna, LA (just across the river from the French Quarter) was fanatic about measurement. He weighed things -- especially spices and herbs -- and insisted that his cooks use exactly the same proportions as he did in his recipes.
In contrast, many New Orleans chefs use the same method as bel's Mammie: a bit of that, a pinch of that, a drizzle of this, a toss of that.
As between chefs of the two persuasions, their differences are about as deep and firmly held as the differences between prescriptivists and the practicioners of the Humpty Dumpty school on this board.
> prescriptivists and the practicioners of the Humpty Dumpty school
bada-bing!
between prescriptivists and the practicioners of the Humpty Dumpty school on this board
Let's see what my handy dandy universal translator spits out: "betwixt uptight old Missises Grundies and descriptive linguists". OK, I understand you now. BTW, what's the plural of Mrs? Putting on my prescriptivist tam o'shanter, shouldn't between (cf. unique) only be used with two single entities on either side?
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… the practicioners of the Humpty Dumpty school on this board.
Another commonly held misconception. We are not each individual Humpty Dumpties. Humpty Dumpty is the great mass of users of a language and he does determine what words mean. The alternative is the prescriptivist notion that if it works in practice but not in theory something must be wrong with the practice.
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… the practicioners of the Humpty Dumpty school on this board.
Another commonly held misconception. We are not each individual Humpty Dumpties. Humpty Dumpty is the great mass of users of a language and he does determine what words mean. The alternative is the prescriptivist notion that if it works in practice but not in theory something must be wrong with the practice.
Ahhh, then the kings!
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Another commonly held misconception. We are not each individual Humpty Dumpties. Humpty Dumpty is the great mass of users of a language and he does determine what words mean. The alternative is the prescriptivist notion that if it works in practice but not in theory something must be wrong with the practice.
never before (at least hereabouts) has it been 'splained so descriptively.
you mean like Humpty Dumpty is a metaphor or analogy or sumpin'?
cool.
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between prescriptivists and the practicioners of the Humpty Dumpty school on this board
Let's see what my handy dandy universal translator spits out: "betwixt uptight old Missises Grundies and descriptive linguists". OK, I understand you now. BTW, what's the plural of Mrs? Putting on my prescriptivist tam o'shanter, shouldn't between (cf. unique) only be used with two single entities on either side?
You go, nuncle! 
How can you weigh herbs, or rather what good would it do? The flavour would still vary with the season, the soil and even the time of day you picked it.
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How can you weigh herbs, or rather what good would it do? The flavour would still vary with the season, the soil and even the time of day you picked it.
The only way to add herbs and spices is "to taste."
what's the plural of Mrs? Miseries, of course!
The only way to add herbs and spices is "to taste."
One of the goals in the restaurant business is to produce the same dish the same way on successive occasions. Given that different line cooks are tasked on different occasions to prepare the same dish, one way that a chef can be certain of getting the same product -- despite the varying personal tastes of the line cooks -- is to insist on the measurement of spices.
I didn't say that it is the best way, nor the way that is preferable in the home kitchen, but it is pretty common in the restaurant trade.
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The only way to add herbs and spices is "to taste."
One of the goals in the restaurant business is to produce the same dish the same way on successive occasions. Given that different line cooks are tasked on different occasions to prepare the same dish, one way that a chef can be certain of getting the same product -- despite the varying personal tastes of the line cooks -- is to insist on the measurement of spices.
I didn't say that it is the best way, nor the way that is preferable in the home kitchen, but it is pretty common in the restaurant trade.
Which would require a consistency in the herbs and spices that probably demands a uniform quality of middling, or?
I suspect that the use of butter in quantities akin to the size of an egg relates to the previous practice of storing butter in crocks rather than in sticks. The butter was probably removed with a spoon or a scoop, the way ice cream is currently, and so "the size of an egg" indicates how generous a scoop to take. Just a hunch.
I used to work in a restaurant where the chef, upon my asking how much of this or that went into a dish, would invariably answer "just enough but not too much."
The size of an egg is a legal measure in Jewish law, a "KaBetza." I think it's just something everyone is familiar with. Exactly what size egg? Just big enough, but not too big, I guess your chef would say.
Or perhaps, eggsactly big enough.
/hangs head in shame
Not all the "unofficial" measuring units are so traditional, though. I've bought the same brand of hair conditioning cream at three different shops now, and on all three occasions the sellers have taken pains to explain to me that I should use an amount "the size of a two-euro coin"...
Ah, I've had a couple of hairdresser use that currency type of measurement when saying how much product to use, i.e. the size of a dime or a quarter.
Which probably means that half that amount will work. I was in my favorite local restaurant Monday, chatting with the chef while she prepared a key lime pie according to a recipe I'd given her. I noticed she only used half as much key lime juice as I had specified, so I asked her. She handed me a spoon and said taste the batter. I saw immediately she was right, my recipe called for too much juice. Of course, that was the amount the producer of the juice recommended on line, so they could sell more key lime juice.
Bet it's pretty much the same with your conditioner.
Aside: bottled lime juice is an abomination. One ought properly use fresh-squeezed lime juice or cook something else entirely.
certain brand name (omitted to maintain the neutrality of this site and to keep from getting tromped on for commercialization) of key lime juice is actually pretty good. I bought two pounds of key limes once and did not get enough juice to make one daggoned pie. And they were very expensive. certain brand name is $2.25 a bottle and that makes half a dozen very acceptable pies. BTW, the recipe is drop dead easy:
1/4 cup of certain brand name key lime juice
3 egg yolks
1 15 oz. can of sweetened condensed milk
mix the above and pour into graham cracker crust pie shell.
Bake at 350 for 15 minutes to set the custard, which is what the mixture really is.
Garnish with paper-thin slices of limes arranged to your individual taste and serve cold, with a glass of Chateau Yquem, preferably 2003 vintage. (a mere $125 for a half bottle will get that for you at retail, but be prepared to pay $250 to $300 for a half bottle at a good restaurant.)
And you take the 3 egg whites and whip them up into meringue for the pie, right?
Canned sweetened condensed milk is also an abomination. I think all of this stuff is set out plainly in Leviticus. To make it yourself (as God intended) follow these simple instructions:
4 cups whole milk
2 cups white sugar
1 vanilla bean
Combine the milk, sugar and vanilla bean (split and scraped) in a heavy saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved. Increase heat until the mixture begins to actively simmer and cook for about an hour, stirring from time to time, as it may stick to the bottom of the pan. The mixture will be done when it has thickened, reduced by about half, turned a light tan colour and registers about 225F on an immersed thermometer. Strain and chill; keep refrigerated.
The recipe for poppy seed strudel I follow also has you reduce a couple of four cups of milk by about half over a very low flame, stirring constantly, which is the principle reason I hardly ever make it.
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Canned sweetened condensed milk is also an abomination. I think all of this stuff is set out plainly in Leviticus.
As I said to one of my neighbors recently, Oh, you are so Old Testament!
but key lime pie was 'invented' post US civil war, when borden, (the first company to make canned milk) got a contract to help supply food goods to south (and part of the 'rebuilding of the south' the southeners agreed, sweetened condenced milk was a abomination, and in their efforts to reduce the sweetness, they added lime juice and 'created' key lime pie.
(improvements in technology resulted in evaporated milk a few years later)