The question was what is a stick of butter in a American recipe. Apparently they don't use sticks of butter elsewhere, but it is 1/4 of a 1 lb package in American stores and American recipes, end of discussion. As to how I am sure it is a "real" pound, by US law it is not only marked as such, but also as 453 or 454 g. It is pretty unlikely to be 500 g.
--- On Sat, 4/4/09, Jeremiah MacGregor <jeremiahmacgre...@rocketmail.com> wrote: From: Jeremiah MacGregor <jeremiahmacgre...@rocketmail.com> Subject: Re: [USMA:44341] 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, 7:02 PM 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.
