I mentioned the meniscus earlier. When using laboratory glassware, you read the bottom of the meniscus. Is the convention different with kitchen measuring glassware? (Not that it’s going to make a difference in cooking.)
I not sure why you think cups are rare outside the US. I’ve been seeing and using cups, 1/2 cups, tablespoons, teaspoons etc in recipes in New Zealand and Australia for years.
Use of cups as a measure is still very common in Australia and NZ, although as mentioned it’s a metric cup, not the US one. Recipes often include a weight as well (particularly when baking as noted above) - but I reckon just about every household would have a cup measure. There are stores that sell the US version too, but I always just manually adjust down a little.
No, it shouldn’t be different. Perhaps we’re describing it differently between people?
Here is what I mean. That’s for the image, which may not be linkable. From the page (red emphasis mine):
inside a glass cylinder water will have meniscus that has a bottom.
at the top of a vessel it will rise slightly above the top edge of the vessel.
Cups are a very good way of measuring :o
Say your recipe calls for 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of salt, 2 cups of oatmeal and 2 cups of orange juice, and four cups of oatmeal, etc etc. You get out your cup and cook away!
However… In the UK you have to weigh all those ingredients :smack:
I got by for years not knowing, and not needing to know, that a “Cup” is 8 oz. (although I had occasion to learn recently).
Here’s the simple approach, and all you need (for starters at least):
A “Cup” is that amount which fills a receptacle which bears the label “1 Cup” or “1 C”.
So just get that set of measuring cups and spoons, and when you need a cup, or a tsp, or a half-cup or whatever: Just find the receptacle with the right label on it, and fill that to the top (or to the “fill line”).
I don’t think I want to eat at your house …
I mis-read your post; but since I hit reply already, I’ll go ahead…
A measuring cup (note the American and Metric markings, BTW) usually isn’t cylindrical. More of an inverted truncated cone. I happened to have a glass custard cup in the drying rack. The slope of the sides are steeper than those of a measuring cup, but the vessel is A) glass; and B) not cylindrical. I put some water in it and looked at it. The meniscus was definitely concave. Had I over-filled it, it would have been convex (above the rim).
Which is what you said in your post, except I mis-read/misinterpreted it.
Just because one is precise, it does not mean one is accurate
Hi , the original poster my have the same issues as myself. (NB I am making indirect reference to other somewhat random responses to the original question]. The internet is not nation based , so when one finds a decent recipe, you go with it, only to find it uses archaic terms such as “cup” !!? In the uk ‘cup’ refers to a Breast/bra size ! >eg B cup or if you’r lucky/unlucky , DD cup !
So no surprise us Europeans are a little bit confused by your [US] terminology. This is why Metric was created, grams for weight, litres [or in this case millilitres] for volume.
I now know that a cup in US cooking is a half pint. In the uk, 250ml. but strangely 240ml in the Americas. Another reason to use Metric is that US and former overlords, the UK Imperial measurements do not match! Any functional, trans-national organisation uses metric. just sayin…
Anyway,>>> point>>>> US cup = Half Pint =250ml [ish] ! ;}
This is a point of great shame to me as an American. WHY we couldn’t get on board with metric is beyond me.
I make herbal medicine, for which we use ounces of dried herb and ounces of liquid solvent (usually alcohol and water) - BUT we’re talking about different “ounces”. In the same recipe. The dried herb is measured in ounces by weight. The liquid is measured by ounces in volume. It’s maddening. I don’t know why we can’t just convert everything to milligrams and milliliters, except that it would mean a lot of time in the lab and rewriting all my charts. 
The thing is, unless you’re trying to order a pint of beer in the United States, imperial measurements don’t mean jack shit. A cup is a cup, a pint is a (US) pint, and everything else is Kosher.
My litmus test is, will my mother benefit from a wholesale conversion to the metric system? Secondarily, will the first amendment be violated by a mandate for the metric system?
I use cups, oz, grams, ml interchangeably. Maybe I’m awesome, but I tend to think that units of measure are simply units of measure so deal with it. It’s not brain surgery or rocket science to approximate 28 grams. Recipes (other than some baking recipes, especially bread) just don’t need that much accuracy unless you’re running a chain that requires consistency. And good bread recipes are percent based and work with any unit of measurement.
Yeah, the metric system is nice. I use it (seriously, my house and car are in centigrade), but why should I force others – my dear mother – to use it?
Stop telling us how stupid we are. It works, and it works well for us.
I just learned that in a perfect world, bras would be sized in milliliters.
And, for some people, condoms.
nvm
We ARE stupid for not converting wholesale, and the reason we’re stupid is because of people like your mother, and my mother, and lots of people’s mothers (and at my age, many of my contemporaries) being so damned set in their ways and afraid of doing anything different or relearning anything. I also blame the same idiotic pigheadedness for the convection ovens not being the norm in all kitchens. It is American Exceptionalism at its worse, preventing us from moving forward. America does it this way, ergo it must be the best way.
Wait, you can still buy a non-convection oven? It’s literally just a fan. Good good, do they still sell ovens with gas marks? Okay, that’s the British term. I can’t remember what we called it when I was growing up, but it definitely wasn’t a set temperature!
A further embarrassment, sadly not confined to the US, is a lack of scientific thinking which allows phony “medicines” to proliferate and people to sell herbs as “medicinal” despite the horrible conditions under which they’re produced and the simple fact most of them either don’t work, or don’t work unless you actually get the active ingredient in the pills, which the manufacturers cannot and do not guarantee.