Varied Cooking Measurement Confuses The Cook

Following a recipe would be so much easier if every person used the same cooking measurement when writing down the instructions. That is not to say that a cup is not a cup or a teaspoon is not a teaspoon. That is to say that a tablespoon equals one sixteenth of a cup. It would save a lot of time in trying to decipher a recipe if the cooking measurement called for one sixth of a cup instead of two tablespoons plus two teaspoons.

The basic cooking measurement used in recipes are generally standardized, with even a pinch having less than one eighth of a teaspoon dry and a dash being somewhere between three drops and one fourth of a teaspoon of liquid. Most just thought a pinch and a dash was something your mother made up to describe that they put just a little of whatever the ingredient is but now know it to be a bonafide cooking measurement.

If you do a lot of cooking from recipes, whether full meals or baking, it may be worth having a conversion table from the US Dairy Association, Nutrient Data Laboratory to insure you are using the correct amount of each ingredient. This source also offers US to metric conversions in case you are using a foreign cookbook in the U.S. and need to make more exact cooking measurements.

Even some cooking measurement systems seem to be foolproof; they can still cause some consternation among cooks, such as the number of eggs to add to a recipe. The size of an egg may compromise the integrity of a recipe, for example, if it calls for two eggs and all you have are really small eggs, they may only equal one extra large egg or one and a half large egg.

Perhaps you are making gravy and the recipe calls for cornstarch to thicken the liquid and all you have is flour. It will take two tablespoons of flour to replace one tablespoon of cornstarch for thickening but now knowing that can cause added time going by trial and error. Another helpful cooking measurement to know is that three tablespoons of cocoa and one tablespoon of butter is equal to one square of chocolate.

Recipes are typically tried and tweaked over the years with minor changes made to adjust for different tastes and then the ingredients and their cooking measurement are often handed down as family recipes. Usually, as long as the list of ingredients and their individual cooking measurement is followed, the finished product will at least be close to the original.