:smack: True enough! I was thinking of things that US cookbooks usually measure volumentrically, like flour and sugar, rather than that sort of thing. You’re right - most USAnians wouldn’t have the slightest idea what a half-kilo of mince is. 
It’s a baking book, so Ground Homberg Mince won’t be an issue.
Oddly, though, you almost always see meat in weights, not volumes. For example, a recipe might call for a cup of flour, three cups of chicken broth, and a pound of ground beef. (Or by count - two chicken breasts, etc.)
Actually, cheese, if given in “grated” amounts (which it invariably is for baking recipes) will often be in cups or tablespoons. I.E.- 1/4 cup of grated emmenthaler. Same thing goes for butter and I have rarely seen apple pie recipes call for four pounds of apples … it usually goes something like 4 cups of peeled and pared apples… same for any other fruits or vegetables which must be broken down or chopped- they are usually given in volumetric cup measurements. Or at least that seems to be the standard that I often see.
Also, when dealing with apples I have also seen 1/2 peck, peck, and bushel measurements rather than pound weight.
For a baking cookbook? How many apples do you generally use to bake something? Even a deep-dish apple pie only requires about eight apples.
So, a quarter of a peck.
See? Was that hard?
Well, usually, when we get the gumption up and bake pies, we figger one ain’t gonna cut it, so we go down to the local orchard and buy a peck for several pies.
A half peck is around 5 pounds of apples give or take, so it’s around that 4lbs. of apples that is given as an example. And often when you buy those large bulk bags of apples at grocery stores they are right around a half peck.
Since the main questions have been answered, can someone answer me this?
What’s the device called, that fits on a griddle, to keep your meats (typically bacon) flat?
My Mom had one, it was basically a flat, square chunk of glass (smooth, rounded edges and corners) with a knob-type handle in the middle. She’d use it on any meat that would have a tendency to “crinkle” badly when heated on a griddle.
I lost it in a move and can’t find out what it’s called (I’ve tried a “griddle flat,” and described it, only to be met by blank stares) so as I can replace it.
Bacon Iron
Never seen a glass one though but it does the same job.
I’d call that a “griddle press.” Searching on that phrase on Amazon shows a bunch of likely candidates.
Thanks. I don’t really need one; I just feel real bad about losing the one I had as it was my Mom’s, and we’d had it (and hardly ever used it!) since as far back as I can remember.
ETA: And it was bugging the hell out of me not knowing what it was actually called.
Tank. I believe what you are looking for is called a bacon iron.
On edit seems I may be wrong… And late
Quoth devilsknew:
<aside>
The first time I tried baking an apple pie from scratch, I saw that Gramma’s recipe called for 6 cups of apples. Well, I figured that volume was a pretty awkward way to measure something like apples, but no worries, I can handle the math. I figured, well, apples are near as no difference to the same density as water, so 6 cups would be 3 pounds, and put apples on the scale at the grocery store until I had 3 pounds of them. Then, I chopped them up, and didn’t bother measuring, since I already knew I had the right amount. Then I tried to put them in the pie crust, and realized that 6 cups of sliced apples isn’t actually 6 cups of apples; it’s three cups of apple slices and three cups of gaps between the slices. Oops.
Fortunately, I was planning on baking two pies anyway, so I just made two apple pies, instead of one apple and one peach like I’d originally planned.
Bacon iron and griddle press bring up pretty much the same things. I’m thinking the griddle press I had probably came with the griddle (it was of a size).
Now if I can just figure how in the !@#$%&!!! I lost it. I swear to Og I put it in the box, put the box in the moving truck, and moved. When I arrived at my new digs, box and press were not in the truck.
Nor were they in the old house still (it was just a cross-town move, so I could still go back and check). Or the garage. Or my car. Or still lurking in any of the cabinets.
It’s as if a random space/time rift opened up inside the moving truck and took just that one box of stuff.
It probably landed on all of those socks that disappeared out of the dryer(s) over the years.
And well, with berries, it is usually half pints, pints, and quarts…
Movers steal stuff… that’s just the way it is. It is part of the tradition, they pick a random box, steam the tape, reach deep inside and take a random item then re-seal everything and act all innocent. And it doesn’t matter if it is a bunch of your buddies and a U-Haul. Sure you thought a pizza or two and some beer would be a fair trade for hauling your sofa up two flights of stairs in 90 degree heat. Yeah right… mister flat bacon guy… lets see how you like it like the rest of us.
As far as socks in the dryer… have you ever looked at the lint trap? Do you really think that much “fluff” comes off your cloths by tossing them around for awhile? No, there is some weird alien technology built into the dryers that singles out a sock and grinds and shreds it into what we call lint. I still haven’t figured out exactly why, but I’m hoping to spend more time on it after I get to the bottom of this whole Lincoln assassination conspiracy.
Or a flat…
I have a bacon iron (though I had thought it was called a bacon press) that I imported from the US. We don’t get them over here, but they’re incredibly handy.