Dear John,
One of the issues with cooking recipes is tradition. Recipes are
passed on from generation to generation (often from mother to
daughter) and sometimes over hundreds of years.
As an example, my wife gathered together recipes from her mother's
neighbours in an old people's village a few years ago. One of the
recipes was hand written and had been annotated across the top of the
page, 'This recipe came to me from my great, great, great,
grandmother'. I estimated that this old recipe (the donor was in her
late 90s) might have been initially written in about 1850, or earlier.
Naturally, the recipe had, through various transcriptions, retained
the measures used in the early part of the 1800s. Whatever measures
were mentioned would have been defined by custom in whatever nation
the owner of the recipe currently lived at that time. As it was a
recipe for a cake it was the relative proportion that remained
constant – most of the measures themselves were probably largely
irrelevant – except for one of them.
The recipe called for a gill of wine.
When Wendy asked me about a gill I headed for Google and soon found 34
different definitions for an amount that has over many years been
called a gill. These varied quite remarkably. My favourite was, 'A
gill is a French coffee cup – politely filled!'.
My advice to Wendy was to change all the recipes to metric units. And
my main argument was that if she didn't do this, the tradition of a
century and a half of careful recipe preservation would, most likely,
be lost. I could not see the grand daughters and great grand daughters
of the old lady who gave us the recipe persisting with the cake recipe
while they waded through the history of old measuring words. It would
be much easier for them to simply choose another recipe – perhaps one
marketed by the wine marketing board rather than the one passed to
them by their great, great, great, great, great, grandmother – and all
for want of a definition of an old measuring word.
Oddly, trying to preserve the tradition of old measuring words, such
as a gill, was a sure way to destroy the human tradition incorporated
into the tradition of that particular cake recipe. It was probably the
quality of the cake that allowed the recipe to persist over such a
long time.
In short, preserving one tradition (some old words) could destroy
another tradition (a favourite century old family recipe).
In the end, Wendy converted all of the old recipes and test-cooked
them all before we published the collection of recipes. Alongside this
project we also wrote 'Metric cooking with confidence' that you can
download from http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/MetricCookingWithConfidence.pdf
To specifically comment on the points you make, I don't think that
volume vs mass measures are as important as you say (except perhaps in
some kinds of baking). You can cook successfully as long as you don't
mix the two methods. If you have an important old recipe and you have
the old measures available, then don't convert, just use the old stuff
you have. In Australia, however, this is now not so easy, old
measuring cups, tablespoons, teaspoons and scales marked in pounds and
ounces are not readily available; our best course is to do one single
conversion, do the conversion well with test-cooking and test-tasting,
and then using the metric recipe in future. Australian cooking books
are now all written in metric units and all ingredients come in metric
quantities so, although I rarely advocate conversions, I can see a
place for them here. But, that said, there is only a place to do the
conversion once!
By the way, the old lady's cake is an absolute joy and a pleasure to
eat (Signed, Chief Taste Tester).
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, that you can obtain
from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
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
for more metrication information, contact Pat at pat.naugh...@metricationmatters.com
or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
to subscribe.
On 2009/08/29, at 03:08 , John M. Steele wrote:
Some people may not like metric units, but I don't think that is the
main objection.
Most US recipes are based on volume measurement of the ingredients.
In most of the rest of the world, recipes are weight-based, not
volume-based. Of course, the weights are in grams.
Many people don't have suitable scales, and finding density data or
measuring both ways to convert a recipe is a bit of a PITA. I do
have a suitable scale, and measuring cups, so I can go both ways.
Reality is that I cook the recipe as it reads, but I don't have a
strong preference, and I don't bother to convert recipes.
--- On Fri, 8/28/09, Paul Trusten <trus...@grandecom.net> wrote:
From: Paul Trusten <trus...@grandecom.net>
Subject: [USMA:45705] the metric system and cooking recipes
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Cc: "Sally Mitchell" <sbmitch...@aol.com>
Date: Friday, August 28, 2009, 12:00 PM
When I posted an item on my pharmacy blog about the metric system,
one person commented, "That's fine, but keep it out of my kitchen!"
That was an interesting response. We usually have to deal with
nationalism, or just plain stubbornness, when someone opposes metric
so pointedly, but the dislike of metric units in cooking is a
different prejudice. As a pharmacist, I found myself wanting to use
metric units on this very point. The symbol for pharmacy or a
prescription, "Rx," is actually shorthand for rhe word "recipe," and
a prescription can be considered just that: a list of ingredients
along with directions for preparation. Compounding medications
requires objectivity and accuracy, but why do you think people who
enjoy preparing food from recipes have a nerve struck on metrication?
This whole subject is particularly engaging because USMA member
Sally Mitchell is particularly emphatic about using the metric
system in cooking.
Paul Trusten, R.Ph.
Public Relations Director
U.S. Metric Association.Inc.
www.metric.org
trus...@grandecom.net
