Give ’em an inch…

March 5, 2024 by
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Have you ever encountered measurements in a recipe that just don’t add up? I am not talking about volume or weights (although they can be problematic as well), but rather about size – thickness, diameter, length or width, etc. Sometimes I think recipe writers (or cookbook editors) are not very good at math. This has happened to me a lot recently, and it is driving me batty.

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One biscuit recipe instructed me to pat the dough into a 10 x 12 inch rectangle one-half inch thick and cut out a certain number of rounds. However, the accompanying photos clearly showed the thickness to be closer to one inch, unless the person’s hand was half the size of an average hand. I went with the photo and the biscuits turned out great, but I feel badly for someone who chose the text instead because they would have very flat biscuits.

Another recipe, this one for cookies, said to roll out the dough to a thickness of 1/8 inch. The yield for 2.5 inch diameter cookies was supposed to be 24. At that thickness and diameter I would have ended up with about 40 cookies, so one of those two measurements was not right. Once again, I went with the accompanying photo and made the cookies a bit thicker but the same diameter. For this one I even dug out the ruler because I had been eyeballing it and thought perhaps I was bad at estimating how thick the dough actually was. What is ironic is that this recipe was extra-precise with the weights – 69 grams of this, 84 grams of that.

Lest anyone think this is only a problem with US books, I’ve encountered this in imported cookbooks with metric measurements as well, and it leads to so many questions. Do recipe writers just use guesstimates? Or do they use less precise measurements (perhaps a comparison with another object) and then an editor decides to add an actual number? Are all of my rulers wrong? Am I just a nerd who worries too much about accuracy in a cookie recipe? (I’m definitely a nerd, just not sure about the latter part.) Maybe I should just relax because after all, baking is not rocket science. Nevertheless, these inaccuracies make me bonkers. Does this bother anyone else?

Category: Antipasto

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8 Comments

  • rosajane8  on  March 6, 2024

    Biggest thing that gives me a puzzled look – when cookie recipes say to portion by 1-2 teaspoon measurement- that seems like an awfully small cookie – so I just use my trusted cookie dough scoop – and I do reread that measurement over several times to make sure I did not misread 😂😂😂

  • KarenGlad  on  March 6, 2024

    Drives me nuts too. And am I the only one whose pans are too big for the skimpy base ingredients that barely cover the bottom of the pan, never mind setting some aside for a topping? Must be something wrong with my pans….

  • Indio32  on  March 6, 2024

    Hate the measurements revolving around ginger ie “an inch” or a “thumb sized” bit.

  • Jane  on  March 6, 2024

    Oh Indio32 that is my bugbear too – an inch of ginger varies enormously in quantity depending on the size of the node. So much better to give the quantity of the processed result e.g. 1 teaspoon of grated ginger.

    Another one I had recently in a Jamie Oliver recipe was 10 sheets of fresh lasagne pasta. I was making my own fresh pasta and had no idea what size his sheets were.

  • ldyndiuk  on  March 7, 2024

    One example that comes to mind is a recipe that said to cut tomatoes into 1/4 wedges. A quarter of an inch is a thin slice, not the large wedge pictured!

    I also hate when they just use “large” “medium” etc. What is a medium eggplant? I made something with 3 medium eggplants once that clearly could have just used ONE of those eggplants. Eggplants in eastern MA might just come in different sizes than where the cookbook author lives. Give me a weight please!

  • FuzzyChef  on  March 8, 2024

    I was really surprised the other day to get major measurement inaccuracy in a Marion Cunningham recipe. Everybody make mistakes I guess.

  • LauraMB  on  March 28, 2024

    I agree wholeheartedly. Following the portioning size for cookies, I rarely get the yield specified in the recipe. And what is a “small onion” or “medium eggplant” as ldyndiuk asks? Grated cheese quantity is also an issue. The volume of the grated cheese varies greatly depending on how finely grated the cheese is.

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