Sizing up ingredients

December 14, 2023 by
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A thread on the EYB Member Forum about differences between metric and Imperial measures got me thinking about how recipe writers (along with editors and publishers) treat the measurement of ingredients. I do a lot of baking and have appreciated the trend to include weights in recipes because it leads to more consistent results. I understand, however, that some editors and publishers still resist putting weights in cookbooks. A cookbook author (I can’t remember who) recently answered a question on social media about why they didn’t include weight measures in their most recent release, and they said it was because the publisher didn’t believe in using weights because it might make the book seem less accessible or friendly to the audience. The author gave them the weights and they refused to put them in! Yikes.

Even in books where weights are common there are strange exceptions. A recipe might call for a pound of carrots but then cups of another ingredient or unit quantities for something else, such as one onion. Onion sizes can vary greatly, and it’s almost as bad to see “one medium onion” or “one large onion”. Whenever I see the latter, I think back to when I was six and was photographed for the local newspaper because my mother and I grew a tremendously large onion in our garden. I think it weighed at least three pounds – the photo showed me holding the onion in my lap and it covered most of it! That probably isn’t what the authors intend, but if they are not going to include a weight, could they at least make a size comparison and say “a baseball sized onion”? And please, no “fist-sized onion” measurements. Baseballs are standard in size, but hands are not. Neither are teacups, so no thank you to those comparators as well.

Another set of ingredients where weight measures are extremely helpful is for herbs. One of my favorite chicken recipes from Sabrina Ghayour helpfully provides weights for the herbs in the dish. This is much better than calling for “a bunch” of cilantro because the sizes of bunches at the two supermarkets and the farmers’ market in my town all vary considerably. Slightly more helpful are the “X cups, packed” herb measurements but they always makes me wonder just how packed is packed. Tell me how many grams or ounces and I’ll be a happy camper. If the measurement is not meant to be precise, I would still appreciate a range, especially if the ingredient isn’t cheap. There are few things worse than wasting several dollars of an ingredient in what turns out to be an inedible dish. If I’m not familiar with the ingredient it can be difficult to gauge what a reasonable amount should be.

Accuracy aside, I prefer to weigh my ingredients because it’s also more efficient and dirties fewer dishes. My kitchen already looks like a tornado hit it when I’m through cooking; anything I can do to minimize the mess and resultant cleanup is a big win. Weight measures have become so important to me that I generally refuse to purchase cookbooks that don’t have them. I have pared down my volume measuring tools accordingly – I used to have multiple sets of measuring cups and spoons but now need only one. Of course this has not led to a Marie Kondo-style cleanout of drawers and cupboards but instead to a bevy of additional kitchen gadgets. I still count it as a win, though.

Category: Antipasto

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20 Comments

  • FuzzyChef  on  December 14, 2023

    Pedantic note: what you and I use is the American system, not the Imperial one. As one finds out if one uses an old British recipe calling for a pint of anything.

    • Darcie  on  December 14, 2023

      Pedantic reply to your pedantic note: the forum thread used the term Imperial so I used that in my post. I understand that Imperial and American (US Customary) systems are different for volumetric measures (distances and weights are the same). 🙂

  • janecooksamiracle  on  December 14, 2023

    Same here. Will not buy any more books that do not include weighs.
    Re. that publisher: WTH ?

  • lean1  on  December 14, 2023

    I like recipes by weight. Much easier than using lots of measuring cups and spoons. Especially flour!

  • Jane  on  December 14, 2023

    I much prefer weights rather than American cup measures. I will buy any British books directly from UK and pay for shipping rather than get the US edition because of that. That publisher who refused the author’s weight additions should get clued in to their customers – more Americans are realizing cooking and baking with weights is much easier and gives better results once you make the adjustment.
    Ottolenghi is another one who gives weights for herbs which I greatly appreciate.

  • KatieK1  on  December 14, 2023

    Measuring cups and spoons hardly take up any space, and I’m glad to have an assortment of spoons in particular for recipes that use a bunch of spices.

  • tomroper  on  December 14, 2023

    I find Ottolenghi’s eccentric over-precision, as cited by Jane, pedantic, but each to their own. The baseball is not a helpful measure; far better to use a cricket ball for size, cricket being a far more internationally understood game.

    • Darcie  on  December 14, 2023

      TIL that cricket balls and baseballs are nearly the same circumference! But you are correct, cricket is more commonly played around the world.

  • hillsboroks  on  December 14, 2023

    I love weight measurements, especially for baking, but find vegetable quantities just a wild guess. Large onion or small onion isn’t as helpful as cups or weights. Tell me to add 1 1/2 cups of chopped onion and make it clear. Yesterday I was making the carrot cupcakes from ATK’s Perfect Cake book. All the ingredients included weight measurements but when I got to the grated carrots it just said “3 carrots grated”. Really? Carrots come in all sizes and I would have loved a weight or cup amount as a guideline. Another pet peeve of mine is the weight of flour. Some charts say a cup of all purpose flour weighs 4.5 ounces and others say 5 ounces. Ditto for cookbooks. If an author would just specify somewhere how many ounces constitutes a cup of flour in their recipes when they don’t include weights on each recipe, it would be a tremendous help.

  • MollyB  on  December 14, 2023

    I find “bunch” to be especially frustrating for greens, as well as for the herbs that Darcie mentioned. I’ve seen a bunch of kale or Swiss chard have anything from around 4-15 leaves, plus the leaves themselves can vary in size. For herbs you’ve also got the “sprig” problem, which is another term that’s pretty much useless as a measurement.

    • Darcie  on  December 14, 2023

      Yes, bunch is extremely vague!

  • annmartina  on  December 14, 2023

    I haven’t wanted to make recipes that aren’t given in weight for years. Also, what is easier than not using a bunch of measuring cups? I was really irritated when Kelly Fields baking book, The Good Book of Southern Baking, was published without weights. Especially considering how particular she is about ingredients in her recipes.

    • Darcie  on  December 15, 2023

      Although I’m not 100% sure, I think that is the book where the publisher nixed the inclusion of weights.

  • eliza  on  December 14, 2023

    As a Scot relocated to Canada, I have recipes in every measurement system, from oz to g to cups, and I can’t say I prefer one or the other. I’m just as likely to make an American recipe in cups or an English one in grams if I think it’s a good recipe.

  • Fyretigger  on  December 15, 2023

    Maxima mea culpa. Conflating American measures with Imperial measures was my failure in the original forum post. And I should have known better; I knew an Imperial pint was roughly 20 ounces versus the American 16, my water glasses are Imperial pint glasses.

    And now I have a new phobia — recipes of unknown origin calling for pints, quarts and gallons. Egads!

  • FuzzyChef  on  December 15, 2023

    Fyretigger: it gets worse. When you get into historical English and American recipes you have to check the year and the location because those measurements varied over time too.

  • tmjellicoe  on  December 15, 2023

    To add to the confusion, I recently read the notes about measurements in a Donna Hay book and found out that an Australian tablespoon is 20 ml, not our usual 15 ml.

  • averythingcooks  on  December 15, 2023

    Having followed this thread, a few thoughts come to mind…

    1. The herb “bunch” drives me nuts. Where I live, parsley is sold as a wedding bouquet & other herbs are typically sold in small, plastic shells. I also grow a lot of herbs in the summer & in my aerogarden over the winter and I preserve them in my freezer. I have absolutely NO IDEA what a “bunch” is.
    2. I have commented on the size of red onions in other places on EYB. JO finally indicated that to him “large” means approx 7 oz. Interesting (or annoying?) when I typically have 14 oz onions sitting in my pantry.
    4. Finally…I continue to read about how essential it is to not change the amounts/ratios of ingredients when canning & THEN read “1 medium onion, diced”. I can google to get an idea OR the author could give the mass expected OR the actual volume of diced veg needed.
    3. I can deal with baseball, softball, cricket ball, tennis ball, field hockey ball & golf ball as a target size but then I read this… “smaller than a tennis ball but bigger than the meatballs you find at Ikea” Can we be the only 2 people in the world that have NO idea how big Ikea meatballs are? How about giving a target mass in grams?

  • averythingcooks  on  December 15, 2023

    …and apparently I struggle to put things in order 🙂

  • Cookie24  on  December 22, 2023

    I also prefer weights rather than cup measurements. I also prefer grams to ounces. ATK just started listing weights in some of their baking recipes. I can’t figure out why making that change took so long, everyone has been complaining about it for years. I was appalled to read that a certain publisher refused to print the weight measurements! What a dumb move. As an EYB member I’m a hard core cookbook buyer, but I refuse to buy cookbooks without weight measurements.

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