Here in 'Murica we use English measure for volume. I have sets of measuring spoons that go 1/8 teaspoon, 1/4 tsp, 1/2 tsp, 1 tsp, 1/2 tablespoon, and 1 tbsp. And I have nested measuring cups that go 1/4 cup, 1/3 cup, 1/2 cup, 3/4 cup, and 1 cup. So, I’m wondering how a set of metric nested measuring spoons/cups goes. Is there one for 1 ml or do they start at 5 ml, etc.?
The first image here shows a 1/5/15/50/100/125 ml set of spoons. 1ml is pretty standard in a set. You can get metric spoons in the U.S.A., and even metric-sized notebooks in which to write down your recipes.
No you don’t. You use American Customary units, which have different values to the Imperial system used in England and the rest of the UK (1 US Pint = 0.832674 Imperial Pint).
It may seem a pedantic point, but isn’t that what we’re all here for?
In most metric countries, they just don’t use volume measure, or at least not to nearly the extent we do here in the US. Ingredients like flour and sugar are instead measured by weigh, and every kitchen has a kitchen scale.
You can also get metric measuring spoons that match the closest common tsp or tbsp fraction.
It depends on when and how fully a particular country was metricised as to what they’d commonly use to measure stuff in the kitchen. This maps shows what countries are metric to what degree, and you can see from the Wikipedia page it comes from when different countries adopted the system. France has been metric since the late 1700s, while some other counties only started the switch on the 2000s. With the exception of those in Mexico, we’d probably need some overseas responses to this question to get a perspective from a truly long-time “metric” country.
I’m in Canada, and though we’ve been metric for almost 50 years, I don’t own a single metric volumetric measuring device for the kitchen (with the exception of the pyrex measuring cups with both units printed on opposing sides). The cook books and recipes my family have mostly come from earlier generations who still used the imperial system, or from US books or websites that still use US customary units. The most recent cookbook I got as a gift this year was printed in California and uses teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, ounces, and fractions thereof. Some (but not all) of the recipes also state in brackets the mass volume in grams. Mass is a much more accurate but significantly more tedious method to measure ingredients, and I’ve slowly been converting all our recipes to scaled recipes using a spreadsheet that I can enter whatever unit of measurement is used.
If I’m going to spend 3 hours making an Indian dish with 20 different ingredients and 8 different steps, I really want to make sure I have the correct proportions of ingredients. 1 tbsp. of canola oil weighs twice as much as 1 tbsp. of cloves, and six times as much as 1 tbsp. of dried chilli peppers. I’ll use a good kitchen scale to measure the mass of ingredients in complex or new recipes, but I just pull out the old plastic teaspoons to measure the 4 ingredients going in to the instant mashed potatoes and count scoops of coffee going into the coffee maker every day… and my wife simply eyeballs the amounts of cheese powder and milk when she makes Kraft dinner for the kids.
Older, and some younger, people in Britain think in Imperial measures, very similar to those in America,.
Younger, and some older, people think in metric maybe.
The powers that be have been pushing metric these fifty years and more — nothing to do with the EU — but people don’t generally think these froggie ideas are sensible and we think in feet for man’s height and if petrol is sold by the litre, the highway is marked in miles.
Thank you, America for sticking to the tried and true, it stops many of us here from turning to dreary old metric.
Except for Cups. We are pretty unsure what a Cup is.
US tablespoon is 0.5 fluid ounces = 14.8 ml. Metric tablespoon is 15 ml. So for cooking purposes, they are close enough as to be interchangeable. Same with teaspoons - in both systems, a teaspoon is defined as 1/3 tablespoon.This set of Japanese measuring spoons consists of 1 tbsp, 1 tsp, 1/2 tsp, 1/4 tsp and 1/8 tsp.
1 US cup us 8 fluid ounces = 236.6 ml. Metric cup is 250 ml. So there’s a bit more difference there. This Japanese set of nested measuring cups comes in 60/80/125/250 ml, which I think are 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 and 1 cup rounded to the nearest 10ml.
Norwegian recipes will basically always use “teaspoon” and “tablespoon” for volumes that small, or a “kryddermål” (lit. spice measure) for 1 ml. Sets of metric measuring spoons will vary. I have one from Ikea that goes, 1 ml, teaspoon (5 ml), tablespoon (15 ml), desiliter (100 ml), 1/2 cup (125 ml).
The first two hits on google have: 1 ml, half teaspoon, teaspoon, tablespoon, desiliter and quarter teaspoon, half teaspoon, teaspoon, tablespoon.
This. I got tired of fussing with the flour before dumping it in my bread machine so I got a scale, carefully measured and weighed the flour for my favorite recipes, and penciled in the weight (in grams, no less) in the recipe book.
Spanish ones use the same, sometimes specifying rasa (exact) or con copete (“with a hill”). Other popular volume measurements are the yoghurt-pot (where it is understood they mean an individual-sized yoghurt, not one of the bigger sizes) and the glass (specifying which type of glass). But if someone is trying to be exact they’re going to give measurements in weight.
I’ve also heard of recipes giving very small quantities as a “knife-tip”. But this is only used for ingredients added for flavor, not for something where precision is significant.