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... 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?
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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.
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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?)
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I believe it may have been Lazarus Long who opined that recipes are merely roadmaps except for those involving baking.
TEd
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Pooh-Bah
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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
dalehileman
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> cup of coffee is only 5 oz most of them that I see are about 40 oz... 
formerly known as etaoin...
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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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Quote:
> 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"
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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. 
Last edited by belMarduk; 03/16/06 04:10 PM.
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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.
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