In Canada, butter is packed in hard metric sizes (250 g, 500 g, etc), but is
not called a pound. There a pound is still 454 g.
In the 30 years I lived there, I don't ever recall coming across a 'stick' of
butter - that must be a unique US term.
John F-L
----- Original Message -----
From: Jeremiah MacGregor
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Sunday, April 05, 2009 12:02 AM
Subject: [USMA:44347] Re: Even with "dual," you can't please everybody
I don't see a need to preserve recipes in English form once they have been
converted to metric. The fact that the recipe is preserved in some form then
the history is not lost. Anyway which version of pre-metric measures do you
want to preserve?
When you say a stick of butter is 0.25 lb, what about in places where the
pound is 500 g? What about historically where the pound was not 454 g? In
places where the pound is 500 g, then each quarter is 125 g. Doesn't Canada
use 500 g pounds for butter? If so, then how would that affect the use of
sticks of butter in American recipes?
If the butter is not exactly a pound and each stick is not precisely 0.25 lb,
then to state to a precision of 113.4 g is incorrect. There seems to be too
much granting of precision where precision doesn't practically exist. Those
official definitions are ignored in the real world.
Unless we can show that each stick is cut exactly the same, then I don't see
the need to express the mass of a stick of butter to the decigram level. Even
you state the volume of the butter is not precise and give an amount of 8.3~8.5
tablespoons (=15 mL) or 124.5 mL to 127.5 mL. If I use the average of 126 mL.
If I use 113 g for the stick mass, and divide it 126 mL, I will get a more
practical 900 g/mL. A much easier number to remember and deal with.
Jerry
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: John M. Steele <jmsteele9...@sbcglobal.net>
To: U.S. Metric Association <usma@colostate.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 4, 2009 2:35:52 PM
Subject: [USMA:44341] Re: Even with "dual," you can't please everybody
Yes, it does say something about isolationism.
However, recipes represent history, the past. Quite apart from the
argument of whether we should continue to use the old terms, we should document
them, so we don't lose track of the past.
A "stick" of butter is 0.25 lb, therefore about 113.4 g. The pound of
butter is divided into 4 sticks, each wrapped in waxed paper. As US cooking is
volumetric, not weight based, the wrapper is marked in tablespoons and
teaspoons, so a smaller unit can be cut off using the wrapper as a ruler. The
stick is slightly longer than the 8 tablespoons marked off, perhaps 8.3 - 8.5
tablespoons. Thus, the density of US butter is approximately 113.6 g/124.2 mL
= 0.915 g/cm³, with a bit of conversion.
If you Google the term "stick of butter" you will find this definition,
although it may be a problem in the dictionary. There are a number of terms in
British cooking that I don't understand either, and a number of vegetables have
different names.
--- On Sat, 4/4/09, Martin Vlietstra <vliets...@btinternet.com> wrote:
From: Martin Vlietstra <vliets...@btinternet.com>
Subject: RE: [USMA:44329] Re: Even with "dual," you can't please
everybody
To: jmsteele9...@sbcglobal.net, "'U.S. Metric Association'"
<usma@colostate.edu>
Date: Saturday, April 4, 2009, 12:40 PM
John,
My father was Dutch and my mother British. One of their wedding
presents was a Dutch cookery book – measurements in metric units of course.
The statement “100 g zuiker” can easily be translated to “100 g sugar” and is
totally unambiguous. All that is needed is a tourist’s phrase book to look up
“zuiker”. The phrase book could have been from either a Dutch publishing house
or a British publishing house.
A number of American recipes have the term “a stick of butter”. As a
Brit, that is a meaningless concept to me. I checked in my copy of the “Oxford
Concise Dictionary” what was meant by “a stick”. The dictionary gave 16
different meanings for the word “stick” spread over nearly an entire page, but
none of them could enlightened me. Similarly with Chamber’s dictionary.
Doesn’t this say something about the isolationism that is cause by
the use of customary measures?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: owner-u...@colostate.edu [mailto:owner-u...@colostate.edu] On
Behalf Of John M. Steele
Sent: 04 April 2009 15:36
To: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:44329] Re: Even with "dual," you can't please everybody
Pat,
You understandably write from a Commonwealth or Australian
perspective (I don't mean spelling), and as a metric consultant, you may have a
vested interest in making old measurements sound more confusing than they are.
I am confused by spoons and cups in recipes from Commonwealth nations.
However, if you receive a recipe from the US , there is no
confusion; the terms are well-defined and have been for some time. I regularly
use a recipe from my greatgrandmother which dates to around 1890. Common cups
and spoons may be of any size, but measuring cups and spoons are well defined.
They are as important to us as your scales (most are marked in metric as well).
Each term is followed by a definition in Customary units, an
overly exact metric conversion, and a practically rounded metric conversion:
cup: 8 US fl oz, 236.5882 mL, 240 mL
ounce: 1 US fl oz, 29.573 53 mL, 30 mL
Tablespoon: 0.5 US fl oz, 14.786 76 mL, 15 mL
teaspoon: 0.1666... US fl oz, 4.928 922 mL, 5 mL
Dry and wet measuring cups are of different designs, but the
same capacity. Dry cups are brim fill, stricken level with the back edge of a
knife. Wet cups are fill-to-mark.
American cooking is entirely volumetric, and it is probably
easier to convert to metric volume than determine the density of everything.
The cup and tablespoon are noticably different than Australian, but no
confusion as the terms are well defined and standardized by NIST (handbook 44
Appendix, C, SP811, etc)
Now, if only we could get Americans to convert the above
volumes to metric.
--- On Sat, 4/4/09, Pat Naughtin <
pat.naugh...@metricationmatters.com > wrote:
From: Pat Naughtin < pat.naugh...@metricationmatters.com >
Subject: [USMA:44327] Re: Even with "dual," you can't please
everybody
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Date: Saturday, April 4, 2009, 9:34 AM
Dear John,
I have posted a response to this that you can find at the
same address at http://www.t-g.com/blogs/bettybrown/entry/26458/
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin,
has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern
metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save
thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses.
Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and
professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in
Asia, Europe, and in the USA . Pat's clients include the Australian Government,
Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada , the UK , and the
USA . See http://www.metricationmatters.com/ to subscribe.
