Last night my roommate said that she needed a measuring cup. I was curious because I know that there are about 5 of them in one of the cupboards. I reminded her of that and she responded by saying that they were Liquid measuring cups and she needed a dry measuring cup. She says that there is a difference, and that there is a way to convert measures if you need to measure dry goods and all you have is a liquid measuring cup. I think that this is just plain wrong. What gives? Are there 2 different forms of measuring cups?
It’s best to measure dry goods by weight rather than volume because some stuff compacts more than others. A one cup measure of flour will vary in its weight depending upon the type of flour and how much you smush it down into the cup.
So, I believe the best measuring device for dry goods is a scale.
If you are in the US they are the same, according to this site:
http://www.busycooks.com/help/usmeasure.html
It would be hard to measure flour or something in a liquid measure, though, because you couldn’t level it off.
The volume of a dry cup, and a liquid cup are the same.
The cup itself is different. Liquid measures are usually drawn on the side, to be viewed from outside on a glass cup, or from the top, with a metal cup, and the measures come to a point below the rim. This way, you can fill the cup to the appropriate point, and then carry the liquid to the dish without spilling it.
Dry measure cups are usually exactly a cup, or half, or quarter right up to the brim. You fill them to heaping, and then scrape the excess back into the container with a spatula. Makes it easier to get exact measures with flour, or sugar. Teaspoon and tablespoon measures do come in both styles, but the most common are the dry measure type. I use a medicine cup for small measures of liquids.
Tris
“Sic transit gloria mundi. And Tuesday’s usually worse.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein ~
How much does a cup of flour weigh? It would end up being the same problem you initially mention.
Nope. IIRC, standard measurement for a cup of flour is 5 ounces. I do all my flour measuring by weight, it’s much easier.
Really precise recipes for baking, use weights, but most recipes we see just use the volume and you can measure it as Triskadecamus mentioned.
I think that is because more people have measuring cups than scales.
I don’t own a scale. I just try to get it close, but with dry ingredients you don’t want to miss by much. Especially when you’re baking because once something has started baking, there isn’t much you can do to alter its course.
Pardon me for being obtuse, but if we are going to accept a book answer as the “standard weight of a standard cup” of something being just so much, could someone review for me again just how come it is “better” to weigh the stuff than to measure with a cup?
The recipe says cup. I got a cup, and a scale. I translate the cup to five ounces, and use the scale, sneering at the primitive cup.
Nope, sorry, there is no gain in accuracy in this. No loss, either, but not a good enough reason to buy a scale if all my recipes are already stated in cups.
Tris
Rule of Reason: “If nobody uses it, there’s a reason.”
But only with some flours will one cup equal five ounces. Some will weigh more, some will weigh less. If you sift the flour, the weight will change if you measure out a cup because the flour is no longer packed closely together.
However, these differences are pretty small and for the most of us, including me, it doesn’t matter.
But I would wager that a professional baker is going to measure out flour by weight for his recipes because he wants to know exactly how his concoction is going to turn out.
Almost all European versions of recipes I’ve seen use weights instead of cups for dry measures–so many grams of flour, etc.
Trisk, just about all professional recipes deal with ingredients by weight, rather than volume. If you buy a scale and try this for a while, you’ll understand why. It’s MUCH easier to grab a bowl and measure out 30 oz of flour than it is to dip-level-scoop out 6 cups of flour.
When you use a cup, the amount of something like flour varies dramatically. If you pack it, you can probably fit 8-10 ounces in a cup. Have you ever put flour in a cup, and cut through it with a knife? It settles, and settles, and settles.
You ever wonder why your recipes vary every time you make them? Why the bread you made this week is bricklike, but it was light and airy last week? I’m not saying that flour measurement is the only factor in stuff like this, but when you weigh ingredients rather than rely on volume, you can much more easily get the same result every time you make a recipe. Most home cooks don’t care - most professional kitchens have to care.
To be honest, I measure my flour partially because it’s more accurate, and partially because once you have the scale it’s about a gazillion times more convenient. I weigh everything I can - no dirty measuring cups, more accurate, plus I can just dump things in the mixing bowl (ie, you need 4 oz of butter, stick the mixing bowl on the scale, add glops of butter 'til you get 4 oz.)
Bob,
My point is that if you have a recipe that is expressed in cups, an estimate of how much that is by weight is just that, an estimate. Your professional baker is baking cakes from a recipe that says pounds, not cups. So he measures in pounds. For him, converting to cups is an estimate.
Sifted measures are usually described as sifted. They certainly were in all the recipes I followed as a cook, in civilian, and military kitchens. Sifted measures are always by volume, by the way, even in bulk recipes where everything else is in weights.
A recipe is a proven design. It has been made before, using its own consistent measures, and processes. Deciding to apply a standard weight per cup to it, and then measuring by a scale is not an improvement in accuracy. It is a differentiation in technique, which might work well, or might not. Large recipes are often adjusted for daily humidity, or even barometric pressure, because it affects the product. One egg is a standard in household recipes. The reason is not that all eggs are created equal, it is because no one measures eggs by weight at home. You use one, because none is not enough, and two is too many. In a commercial bakery you measure eggs by the pound. I have some household recipes that specify a medium egg, because an extra large egg is too much.
Using a scale is quite reasonable, if your recipe lists ingredients by weight. Using it because it is more accurate to measure cups of something in pounds is delusional.
Tris
“I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.” ~ George Santayana ~
Trisk,
I’m merely repeating advice given to me by people who have cooked for a living. And others in this thread have agreed with me.
And as I’ve said before, I don’t own a scale. I just measure by volume and hope for the best, but when you’re making chocolate chip cookies (which is the extent of my baking ability), it will probably come out OK.
Wow, I didn’t know methods of measuring out dry ingredients would spark such a heated debate.
I think I should scurry out and let professional cooks settle this one.
Bob, I believe that what Trisk is saying is that when the people at Nestle Test Kitchens put together the recipe for chocoalte chip cookies, they threw out their scales and got out a set of measuring cups because even though they know that weight is more accurate, they also know that their audience hasn’t got a scale. So when they constructed the recipe, they accounted for the variations of volume measuring. They avoid publishing any recipe in which minute differences (1/3 of an egg, or one ounce of flour) makes a critical difference. For the Tollhouse recipe, it may well be that 5.1 oz/cup of flour gets you optimal cookies, or 4.9/oz pr cup. Since the people who invented the recipe were not more specific, there is no advantage in our trying to be more picky than they.
It is rather like signifigant digets in science–if the guy who originally took a set of measurements rounded everything off to the nearest ten (called everying between 1 and 7/8 and 2 and 1/8 cups “2 cups”), than he can’t latter claim that he is learning anything signifigant when he notices a correlation of less than 10.
Now then, a perfectionest home cook could improve on a recipe by taking careful notes of how much flour they used by weight and then noting how the finished product turned out, but that is altering the recipe, making it more percise, not just following it.
I believe that all I had said in previous posts was that dry ingredients could more accurately be measured by weight, rather than volume, but if you had to measure by volume, the differences would likely not be much.
I didn’t intend to become the poster child for measuring by weight.
I had thought I was just giving a helpful suggestion, but it met with surprising hostility.
Just a tip – do not use dry measuring cups (the kind designed to be leveled off) to measure boiling water. I did this for years, burning my fingers many, many times in the process, before I finally wised up and bought a set of liquid measuring cups, with the appropriate lip and pouring spout. I think you can still see a few of the scars across my fingers.
Incidentally, the measuring cups themselves can vary quite a bit–especially if you get cheapo plastic ones. There have been a few studies on this, and the variation they found were quite unsettling!
Gourmet magazine has tried to deal with this problem by adopting the Williams Sonoma cups and spoons as their standard measure for their recipes.
As to the weight vs. volume thing–if the recipe is written for volume measurements, then trying to convert it to weight is pointless. If it is written for weight, you can convert it to volume, but your results may suffer. Weight is far far more accurate and sensible. (Of course, like any average American home cook, I personally cook using volume measures.)
I rarely use a measuring cup (A scale? Does it have to be a yearly calibrated Williams Sonoma Scale???) Once I get a recipe down, it’s just not necessary. My mom made the most wonderful pizza, french bread (oh, out of the oven we would inhale whole loaves slathered in butter) cookies, all kinds of baked goods and good food and I noticed she would always adjust the amount of flour by throwing more in as necessary, hardly weighing it out by the gram. If a recipe calls for a “cup of milk” or a “cup of flour” well, it ain’t rocket science.
Well my roommate came home yesterday with a set of “dry” measuring cups. It is like a set of measuring spoons that go up to a large size. The only difference between these and the “liquid” measuring cups is that the volume of the cup is measured right to the lip and they come with a scrapper to level the cup off. Of course this doesn’t mean that there isn’t the issue of flour being compressed into the cup.
BTW, Ted nobody here is insane. In fact it seems that you missed the entire point behind not only the OP, but the discourse that followed. The one thing that everyone agreed with is that precise measures are not needed for well known home made recipes.
Tedster -
Cooking is an art, and not everyone has talent. You and your mother may be able to instinctively judge measurements; my mother is a master at it. But for some people, especially me, a bowl of instant oatmeal can be a watery nightmare without the proper measuring equipment.
Be glad that you have “the eye”, but have a little compassion for those of us who have had to eat (or toss) the results of our culinary ineptitude.