Too Many Chefs

Well, this should certainly make it easier for me to include both Metric and Imperial measurements in my recipes!!

I find it most illustrative that even when there are conversion tools available, most recipes call for 1/4 cup or 250 ml of this, bake at 200C or 400 F, etc...

No one writes to bake at 394 F for 20.3 minutes. It goes to show that cooking is much more an art than strictly science.

Just as an aside - Meg, let me know if my e-mails are getting through. I feel liek they probably aren't.

And there is this too

http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/gram_calc.htm

So - does it cover something like trying to figure out how many cups are in a pound of flour?

Bastlynn, that's a variable calculation because the density of the flour can change. That's why professionals tend to measure by weight rather than volume.

To demonstrate, sift a bunch of flour into a big bowl, then tap the bowl on the counter and the level line will drop by quite a bit. A cup taken from the bowl before and after sifting will contain a different amount of flour by weight.

So much also for "a pint is a pound the world around", right?

Trust me - I paid attention in chemistry class, so I'm up on my relative densities... unfortunately my great grandmother wasn't, so I've been having to guess on one of her recipes for awhile now.

The great thing is, that cooking (even baking to a lesser extent) is more art than science. There's a lot of tolerance in most recipes. I use as a standare the flour that's settled then given one kerfluffle (yes, that's a word, or so I claim) before opening or measuring for my flour by volume recipes.

Alrighty, I'll keep that in mind then the next time I work on those cookies. ;)

One thing to keep in mind (and why a lot of recipes don't work in cookbooks that are simply translated without being re-tested) is that one cup of European flour is not equal to one cup of American flour. Same with butter, and egg sizes are different. So I think that all recipes on Too Many Chefs developed by Meg and Barrett should be re-tested in the other persons country.

At least twice to ensure proper results.

Once tested for both continents, they should be sent to an independent testing kitchen for further verification and evaluation prior to publication.

(Of course, both of you will now need to quit your day jobs to devote your time to developing recipes for your blog. But now that Meg has a KitchenAid mixer, that shouldn't be too much of a problem.)

ahhhhh,,,David is the BEST!!!