As I understand it, there are NO standards by which measuring cups and spoons are manufactured. I read that somewhere several years ago. -Grainlady

Wow, I never knew this! I've only got one set of cups & one set of spoons so have never had the opportunity to notice any differences.

Why are they advertised as "Standard Measuring Cups/Spoons"??

/tricia

Oh good grief, now what do I do, I have a mixture of everything?
Ladies, just tell me what to get and I'll do exactly what you tell me.
Change

Thanks for bringing this up again. There was a recent thread about this where I asked (and don't think I was answered) isn't a T = 1/2 ounce? (Liquid measure)

I just did this test:

I have 3 sets of measuring spoons, one brand is Paderno, the other two aren't labeled. On my Salter scale, a quarter cup of table salt weighed in at 54 grams, whether I measured 4T, 12t, or 8 half Ts. Unfortunately I only have one 1/4 cup dry measure, Rubbermaid, and this came in at 60g. My guess is the Rubbermaid is off. The others sure were consistent both within and across sets.

As to whether this debunks exactness of baking, I'd say no. It only strengthens the argument for weighing instead of measuring. It's a lot less subjective task. Heck, on the last thread we couldn't even agree what how many ounces a cup of flour weighs. But I'm sure we all know how many ounces 5 ounces of flour weighs. ;)

Oh good grief, now what do I do, I have a mixture of everything?

Just do what I do, I use the same set when measuring ingredients. If I use the steel cups, then I use the steel spoons, and vice versa.

I thought perhaps they "goofed" when they made the stainless steel cups/spoons and perhaps that's why they were on sale??? LOL Too bad I didn't have a third different set to see if any two are alike. (Might go borrow a neighbour's set to see what happens!! LOL)

khandi, I'm having enough problems trying to learn how to cook, Now I am not supposed to trust manufactures to make something this simple correctly, WHY is there not some type of uniformity .

I thought this was what the NBS (National Bureau of Standards) was designed for!
To make matters worse, what are the cookbooks using as a standard? If they use one thing and I use another what is the use of following a recipe?
If it doesn't make any difference why not just a handful of this and a handful of that, this is extremely confusing to me, is this a JOKE?

I got so frustrated with my baking failures (not to mention the hassle of 'conversions') that I finally went to Bed, Bath & Beyond and bought a kitchen scale. Love it!!! (And what an idiot I was not to purchase one sooner...)

sm

The UNITS are standard - 1 cup, 1/2 cup, 1/4 cup, etc. The calibration for content size isn't.

Plastic measuring cups are worse than stainless steel because plastic can actually change size (heat and cold effect it). Decorative ones are even worse for accuracy because they are usually made to "look good" in your nifty new kitchen.

It only tracks that something made in China and sold at the Dollar Store would be questionable at best for a calibrated size.

The good thing... Most recipes are designed by an established ratio of ingredients - take a standard cake for instance. There's a generally known guide to establish the ratio of one ingredient to another. For each type of baking there's a proportion that must be maintained between ingredients that are tenderizers (fat and sugar) and those that are structure builders (flour and eggs). So a standard cake recipe looks something like this...

By measure, one-third as much fat as sugar; two-thirds as much milk as sugar; and about three times as much flour as liquid.

That ratio remains static whether you are using a cup for a measure, or a wheelbarrow or a bucket. By following the ratio of ingredients, that's how cakes can be made in bulk or just one cake.

If you use your el-cheap-o Dollar Store measuring set, you'll maintain the ratio if you use the same cup for measuring through out the recipe. If you switch to a quality cup (where they actually took the time to calibrate it) for part of the measurements in the recipe, then you may be adding ingredients, which would throw off the ratio.

"Grandma" used a quart jar, a pint jar, a coffee cup, tea cup, dessert/teaspoon and tablespoon out of the silverware drawer, and things with sizes compared to eggs and thimbles. They kept their ratio true by using the same "set" of measuring tools without regard for their callibrated accuracy.

NOW we know why we often have a problem duplicating a recipe that was handed down from an ancestor. Our measuring "tools" may be completely off from the originator of the recipe.

I hope that makes a little sense.... (LOL)

-Grainlady

On a kitchen scale, does it indicate how much 1 cup weighs? Or does one have to now figure out how much 1 cup weighs? 3/4 cups weighs? etc...

Obviously, different foods have different weights. But as a rough rule of thumb, 1 cup=250g/ml=1/2lb/8floz. As Grainlady pointed out, as long as you use the same measures consistently, you can't really go wrong. Precision isn't needed.

For instance, I've often made American recipes which call for X tablespoons. Now, American tablespoons are equivalent to only 3 teaspoons, but Australian tablespoons are equivalent to 4 teaspoons. I use my standard Australian tablespoon measure when making American recipes, and frankly I haven't noticed the smallest problem in doing so.

Cooking isn't a precise science - think of it more as an Art, and don't get your knickers in a twist over mathematical accuracy.

I by no means claim to "know" the right answer, but the following are assumptions based on what I've been able to dig up on the topic:

Cook's Illustrated quotes the National Institute of Standards and Technology as saying a tablespoon equals 14.742 grams.

www.cooksillustrated.com/print_friendly.asp?did=4043

I couldn't find that exact reference, but on the NIST site I did find that "In the United States, the cup, tablespoon, and teaspoon are defined as 8, 1/2, and 1/6 fluid ounces, respectively."

http://ts.nist.gov/WeightsAndMeasures/Metric/upload/SP1038.pdf

Here's my problem with the "ratio theory": Who would ever measure a half cup of butter rather than just throw in a stick? How many of us can say that our one cup measure is the same brand as our tablespoon, thereby implying that they're calibrated correctly relative to each other, though not necessarily to a standard? I'm more inclined to believe that variances due to manufacturing (or temp, or whatever) are so minimal as not to have a noticable effect on our baking.

So far, in looking through sites that would appear more authoritative than a cooking site, I have yet to find one place that defines a cup as anything other than 8 ounces, a tablespoon as one half ounce, and a teaspoon as one third of that.

Khandi, regarding your particular sets, I'd figure out which is more accurate and toss the other set. The Cook's article states "We were prepared for large differences in degree of accuracy but found none. All of the spoons weighed in within a few grams of the official standardnot enough to compromise even the most exacting recipe." As I said above, three brands of mine all measured salt the same, to the gram. I see no reason to accept anything less, especially since you actually notice the difference. By the way, what do you do about butter?

Who would ever measure a half cup of butter rather than just throw in a stick?

Our butter only comes in a 1 pound brick.

By the way, what do you do about butter?

I measure my butter in the solid cup, not the liquid measuring cup.

I guess I'm doing the right thing by using the same cups and spoons to measure my ingredients. I will, however, get one of my neighbour's sets just to compare because I'm so curious about this now.

I'm also thinking that if I'm measuring my liquids in a glass liquid measuring cup, which cups/spoons are most comparable with it? the stainless steel or the Tupperware? If the steel cups are not accurate, then I'm adding way too much dry ingredients for the amount of liquid. If the Tupperware cups are not accurate, then I'm not adding enough dry ingredients for the liquid amount. Ugh!

Anyways, anyhow, no real worries cuz my baking thus far still tastes good... and that's a good thing! ;-)
BTW, that's why I love baking more than cooking cuz you can scr*w it up and it still tastes good... 99.5% of the time! lol

I don't have a scale and never have had one, so I don't bother to weigh anything. To add to the fun, I don't measure about half the time, I dump some salt into my hand, or baking powder, and toss it in. The same goes for oil or milk or vanilla, just pour until it looks right to me.

I never sift, and my eggs come from my chickens, so they certainly aren't "standard", everything from the small eggs from the young pullets to the double yolkers from my big girls, it all goes in. I never level off cups with a knife, but sometimes I do kind of jiggle the cup to make it level, LOL.

I'm as likely to spoon shortening from the can or cut off a chunk of butter from the butter dish as I am to measure or to cut a stick at the marks on the paper. Still, my baked goods seem to be fine about 99% of the time. Occasionally I forget something in the oven and burn it, or accidentally omit an ingredient, which usually accounts for the other 1%.

To make things worse, I substitute all kinds of stuff, whole wheat for white flour, applesauce for fat, milk for cream, Amaretto for almond extract. Sometimes I don't substitute anything, I just add stuff. (grin)

I don't think baking is an exact science either, or I'd be plagued by failures and no one would eat my cooking. Instead, people offer to pay me to bake bread or make jam in spite of my "inadequacies" in measurement.

Cooking is like making love. Do what feels right, add whatever sounds good and do it with great enthusiasm, then just enjoy the process. I jump into baking and cooking like I do everything else in my life, happily and with complete abandon!

Annie

I'm pretty much in Annie's camp. Mom used our eating utensils for measuring, teacups, tablespoons and spoons. She cooked 3 meals a day and never worried about exact measurments. She also baked and had one cookbook which I learned to make cakes with. Her favorite was the 1 egg cake, LOL. Anyway, trying to improve MY baking, I bought a digital scale and love it, at least I've stopped worrying if I sifted or leveled ingredients properly (when ounces are known. Unfortunately, so many recipes are not given in ounces or grams, just cups and tsp, etc. Also cans like evap. milk have changed in size and I have no idea what the size was when the recipe was written, so I've just thrown all caution to the wind and most everything is still edible; except my breads which will be a continual learning and trial and error process. At least, I'm not throwing as many things out, although I did throw out my last cake, LindaC's strawberry jello cake and definitely not Linda's fault. I think I just baked it too long. I agree cooking is an art and it's hard to throw out the old habits. FWIW, I never noticed there was a difference in measurements of tools. When I have checked, they all seem to be pretty close. I mostly use pyrex cups for measurements.

Annie - I don't doubt the quality of your baking for a second, but how "consistent" are your results when you bake with abandon? Let's take the difference between chocolate chip cookie recipes. Seemingly subtle variations, such as the addition of an extra egg yolk, sugar/brown sugar ratios, etc. yield very different results.

I think that the idea of accuracy in baking stems from the fact that subtle changes have a greater impact than in cooking.

Final thought: If you're one who feels more comfortable following a recipe to a "T" and are using your measuring spoons, I think you owe it to youself to have an accurate set.

Khandi, most of the brands of butter I buy have the measurements right on the wrapper so you can just cut off the right amount from the pound. Works for me.

Let me try this again....

You have what is representing a 1 cup (dry) measure in your home. It MAY or may not actually measure 1 cup (1-cup is equal to 8-oz. - THAT'S a given - those facts don't change - but the actual size of the so-called CUP might).

The measuring cup could have ONE CUP written on it 32 times expressing the size of the measure, but that does NOT make it an accurate measure for ONE CUP because there are no standards in manufacturing that assures each manufacturer has actually callibrate the measure to 1 cup. It may be 7.75-ounces, it may be 7.50-ounces, not 8.

As far as "eyeballing" ingredients.... You still maintain the ratio of one ingredient to another, which is a primary key to baking despite your tools (or lack of them) for measuring. The recipe is already written with a typical ratio of ingredients, without respect to how anyone using the recipe actually measures or eyeballs them.

I'd also agree with using a scale for accuracy. But most people in the US have failed that test.

And just to muddy the water a bit more... If a recipe calls for 1/2-pound of grated something-er-other - lets say cheese, the most accurate way to get 1/2-pound is to weigh it - it's an amount by WEIGHT - which is why you really need some kind of scale in your kitchen. It's completely inaccurate to try and convert it to a cup measure because each person fills the cup differently - some stuff it, some loosely fill it. And NOOOOOO, because a cup is 8 ounces by measure and a 1/2-pound is 8-ounces, then one cup equals 8 ounces by weight. They are two different things. Somewhere in some schools they have failed to teach the difference in weight and measure..... But I digress on yet one more of my pet peeves.

(LOL) The good news --- baking is fairly forgiving in spite of the human factor. As I recall the time a bunch of us high school girls were supposed to make the same recipe for brownies to be sold, per brownie, in the concession stand at a basketball game. NO TWO pans of brownies looked the same. Many used odd-sized, or miss-sized pans, yet they all ended up with brownies.

-Grainlady

Grainlady - Can't say I disagree with a single thing in your last post. Re the brownies - If you had baked them in my oven you'd probably have three different variations within the same pan!

When measuring dry, if a recipe calls for "a cup", I use a measuring cup. If it calls for 8 oz I weight it.

I was taught that a cup only equals 8 oz if you are measuring liquid. Dry ingredients have different mass, texture, etc. and can weigh more or less than 8 oz when placed in a measuring cup.

A timely thread for me as I was wondering about this when I ruined some choc chip cookies. I have a regular looking ss cup and 3 hefty large measuring spoons starting with 1/2 cup. I used the regular cup for the 2 cups and the spoon for 1/2 cup. The cookies were awful and I started wondering about using the two different sets of measuring devices since the 1/2 cup spoon seems huge. I did try to compare by pouring water back and forth and it doesnt seem that far off but...hm.
Some comments

1) I read that while you can "fake it" on measuring when cooking, great baking requires more precision measurements, preferably by weight
2) Go to recipe books - oh, nope, they don't have weights in baking recipe's
so how are you guys weighing ingrediants? Don't different components have different masses?
3) baking/dry measuring cups seem to be different - how do you find an accurate set?
3a) if ratio's are what's important - how do you do eggs by ratio vs. #?

I vote we all write America's test kitchen and get them to do a comparison test on measuring cups!

"I vote we all write America's test kitchen and get them to do a comparison test on measuring cups!"

Too late, they already did it. As I recall they found ease of use (and minimizing human error) more of an issue than actual accuracy. Response to some of youre points:

2) American recipes typically don't, because as Grainlady said, we failed that test. You can get equivents, but as the prior thread pointed out there are differences even here. I say that a cup of AP flour weighs 5 oz, as this is the equivalent that both Cooks Illustrated and the conversion chart that came with my Salter scale say. Others here were of the impression that a cup weighs as little as 4 oz.

3) A measuring cup carefully filled with water should weigh 8 ounces. Mine is a liitle over, which supports my theory that my spoons are right but my cups are over.

3a) Most recipes I've seen are written for large eggs. I'd consider them a unit.

Well I decided to google.
With the craze for the ultimate cooking pans/utensils/ingredients you would think that someone out there would be touting their "super accurate measuring cups calibrated by the uber scientists at the Institute of Accuracy sure to please professional yuppie foodophiles".
Nope. All-clads 40.00 set not only says nothing about accuracy but the handles look as flimsy as all the rest. I did see some articles that talked about everybody rushing to use scales. Why not just standardize measurements and utensils first? I think that would cover it for most of us. Lots and lots of articles on measuring technique - which of course gets you no where if your utensils aren't up to snuff. And I saw lots of collapsible plastic ones at Sur La Table and WS.

Part of the problem is in how we each measure. If you scoop into a flour container & then bang the measuring cup against the side of the canister you'll end up with more flour, hence heavier, than if you just dipped into the flour & then leveled off with a flat-edge knife. I'm too lazy to do the former so I used a scale to learn how much 'my' cups of flour weigh. After using the scale for a few months, I no longer need to use it as much. Also, WW flour weighs more than AP or pumpernickel.

For bread baking, most recipes are written assuming 4 cups of flour to a pound. Not so with the way I measure. Experience has taught me that I need only 3 3/4 cups for every 4 cups called for in the recipe. Also, the age of your flour & humidity levels will affect weight.

/tricia

One of the reasons I like metric is because it uses milliliters for liquid and grams for solids, not ounces for both. No confusion, except most of my recipes aren't in metric! LOL

Before I get jumped on, I am not preaching metric, just saying one of the reasons I like it.

Fenworth, my chocolate chip cookies always come out the same, I think it's because I know how the dough is "supposed" to look and do whatever I need to do to make it look and feel the same way each time. That can vary depending on the brand of flour, the humidity in the air, whether I'm using my oven or Amanda's, so I nearly always "adjust". My girls like them soft, chewy and thick, never thin and crunchy. The only time it varies is if I lose track and overbake them.

My bread is very consistent, no matter what I seem to do to it, unless my kitchen is too cold for a good rise. Cakes are too, and brownies. My biscuits are light and fluffy and so are the scones. (shrug) I've been using many of the same recipes for decades and they're always about the same, but seldom the same as Grandma's were.

I should say that my results are consistent as long as I follow the original recipe, LOL. I tend to "mess" with recipes and I never know when I start what I'm going to end up with, unless I'm baking with a certain end result in mind.

I do try to make a new recipe the way it's written the first time, without making changes, then go from there depending on my taste.

I say do whatever works for you personally. My slapdash approach has served me well so far. I did feel better, though, when Ann T also mentioned that she never sifts either, LOL.

Annie

Annie -

re: Look and feel - yeah, I guess it's a matter of experience and natural ability. I rarely bake anything, so I rely on exact measures and then blame the recipe if it comes out like crap, which is most of the time!

Khandi, you can buy butter boxed in quarters. Although it isn't necessary. It is easy to measure out a pound of butter. Cut the pound in half and you have one cup of butter or 1/2 pound. Cut the pound into 4 equal parts and you have 1/4 pounds and 1/2 cups. And if you cut one of the halves in half then you have a 1/4 cup. I never measure butter using a measuring cup.

It is also easy to measure butter when a recipe calls for tablespoons. A 1/4 pound of butter (1/2 cup) equals 8 tablespoons.

Ann

That's what I do when it's a new pound of butter. When I use the butter in the butter dish, it's not exactly shaped like it was because we've used some of it, so I measure it in a measuring cup.

bump

Yes, Chase, metric is easier and more accurate. I sew with metric, also.

khandi, your post lead me to check some of my measuring tools.

I checked my spoons from my three "good" measuring spoon sets - all are stainless steel. All of them have markings like 1 tsp, 5 ml - a traditional tsp would actually be a bit under 5 ml but the 6% rounding isn't likely to throw a recipe off. The sets are Amco stainless steel (China) - , non-branded (also China) set that I keep in my spice drawer because they fit in spice bottles so well, and Kitchen Aid.

I weighed table salt leveled off with the sweep method. I found there was variation from measure to measure given the same spoon of about a gram - salt is bumpy so grains catch on each other as one sweeps and the spoon is not filled the same each time. A typical type of measurement inaccuracy that occurs - with liquid measures, one has a similar problem with the thickness of the measurement mark and the meniscus.

The Amco and spice sets were accurate (given the leveling issue mentioned above) - both gave about 14 g per tbsp or per 3 tsp (which works out to within a gram of the 54 grams per 1/4 cup that fenworth got). The Kitchen Aid set was off - it has shallower wider bowls - I think that is responsible for part of the inaccuracy - more surface area to be swept off makes for more variation but part is that they a bit oversized.

I also checked the spice and Amco sets with water and they held the expected 5 grams per tsp, 15 grams per tbsp.

I checked my Vollrath measuring scoops and Amco dry measure cups (both stainless made in China - the latter set was rated best in the Cooks Illustrated dry measure cups test) and they both held the expected ~55 grams of table salt.

Because of the meniscus and measurement line thickness issues, I prefer a taller narrower liquid measuring cup - I hate the Pyrex cup that we have for measuring especially when I need a 1/4 cup - it is so wide and shallow that I don't trust the fill level. I prefer the taller Anchor Hocking cups that I found.

I never measure butter in a measuring cup. Some may be in the butter dish, but I normally have some that is still in the wrapper and cut the measured quantity I need from that. Butter is also 8 oz to the cup (at least closely enough for cooking accuracy) so if I did have to measure it out, I would use a scale. Its too much of a pain getting butter into and out of a measuring cup.

Ann, why all the thread bumping? Did things move that far down in an hour?

chase, if you want to get precise, a cup weighs 8 oz (or a liter weighs 1 kilogram) for pure water (at a certain temperature if you want to get really precise) and anything else with the same density as water. There are some fluids that are different densities - that's why oil floats on water and there are some solids that have the same density as water. And there are liquids and solids that are close enough to 1 cup weighs 8 oz for kitchen measurement accuracy - e.g. oil, butter, most very wet ingredients like canned tomatoes.

shermann, I can see that metric is easier - no remembering of facts like 3 tsp to tbsp, 16 tbs to cup, 2 pints to the quart and no issues of the same name for a different quantity in British and American measures. But it isn't any more accurate.

My SS set is Amco too. Hmmmm... maybe it's my Tupperware set? Will get a neighbours set to see what happens.

khandi, Amco has two kinds of sets for the dry measure cups - the basic one which has thin flat handles and a fancier looking one that has shallower bowls and thicker cast handles. The one Cooks Illustrated and I tested was the basic one.

I had to leave so I didn't put everything I wanted to say in my last post. While I can be precise when needed, I'm somewhat in Annie's camp too. For a lot of cooking the recipes are tolerant of variation. Say 20% more or less of an ingredient isn't going to make much difference.

And sometimes where the recipe is sensitive to the ratio such as water to flour in bread, variability of the ingredients (moisture in the flour) can throw it off so you have to watch how the dough is turning out and make adjustments. Another example: potency of spices varies and the best results come from tasting and adjusting.

But I want my measures to be accurate so I can get accuracy when desired. For example when making a new recipe.

I rarely sift flour. I usually stir and either dip and sweep or spoon into the measure and sweep it off.

Great-Grandma probably measured butter because she churned it and it was in a big lump. :) But we have these nicely wrapped cubes that are standardized. Yay, progress. LOL! (Hers probably tasted better, though.)

Chase, I'm with you on metric. When I was in grade school, we leanred metric with a "it's coming soon!" urgency. Here was are 40 years later and no metric except bottled soft drinks, medical tools, and wrenches because we, the country of innovation, just won't get with the plan. Screw that. Just make the changes. We'll moan and grouse for about a week, then we'll get over ourselves or the next controversy will come along to distract us.

I think Annie hit the nail when she said she knows how something should look and feel. When the same person uses the same recipe to make the same amount often enough, you just "know" and automatically tweak for humidity or pan saize, etc. It's when you have differnet people trying to replicate the same results and scaling up and down that srandardization becomes critical. I saw that with our bakers at one restaurant. When we replaced all the measuring tools so they were identical (instead of using differnt brands of tools), the inconsistencies stopped. Personally, I thought we should have been using weight measurements like most food services, but our owner wasn't on board with that yet.

(Well, there was that instance of having to drill the difference between dry cups and wet cups into tht one person, but....)

My mother bakes by look and feel too! She never uses recipes.

You're right about metric not being more accurate. But it sure is easier to BE accurate with metric.

The problem with converting to metric is that we want to compare metric to US measures, maybe to "get an idea" of how much or how warm/cold, etc. something is. Once we get over that and just use metric for metric's sake, without comparing to US measurements, we will all soon know how much a gram is, or a kilometer, or what a celsius temp is, just as we instinctively know now what inches and feet are. And I'll bet we all know what litres and 2litres are because we've been buying pop in those sizes for years.

We'll all be cooking with our old cookbooks and US measuring cups simultaneously with our new metric books someday. As it is, all of our measuring cups have been marked with metric and US for many years. I've been noticing that some boxed foods are written with English and Spanish directions, so manufacturers will have no problem telling us how to prepare their foods with metric equivalents.

Of course, given the original theme of this thread, it's all for naught, anyway, since many measuring cups are apparently inaccurate in any system! I must admit that I have never thought of checking them for accuracy, I just use them to get close to the recipe amount, give or take a little.

Sherry

LOL, khandi, somehow being in the same camp with someone's mother doesn't make me feel better. (grin)

Annie

"And I'll bet we all know what litres and 2litres are because we've been buying pop in those sizes for years."

Sure do - They're slightly bigger than quarts and half gallons, repsectively! LOL!

A weight "ounce" and a volume "fluid ounce" are two different measurements. (In theory the twain meet for pure water at STP -- standard temperature and pressure -- 25 degrees C and 14.7 pounds per square inch -- but it's hard to figure exactly how they managed to measure that because water has a curved surface, the meniscus.) As long as you remember that they are different things even though they share a word, kitchen measurements will be a lot less error-prone.

That being said, home cooking shouldn't depend all that much on accurate measurements because natural ingredients vary so much. Baking is a bit trickier because certain ingredients need to be in proportion to one another and most of the more sensitive baking ingredients are dry, volume measures may not be accurate enough to give you the exact same results each time. But the results should still be edible.

If you get truly bad results, the recipe is almost certainly the problem. Even when there are no typos or transcription errors -- always a possibility -- the recipe may be lacking in sufficient detail and/or too close to the limits of those proportions, and then not tested enough to reveal these problems. Experienced cooks usually adjust recipes without thinking, but novices should stick to well-tested recipes until they get a feel for their ingredients.

Has anyone noticed you cant get three tsp of anything into a Tablespoon? Every last one of my measuring spoons made in China .

I tried leveling off and putting the three tsp into the one tablespoon it wont fit. Am I crazy??

Before realizing the back of my knife isn’t flat, I was a bit over:

After switching to a flat blade I was maybe a hair under:

I do think I’d have had better results with a finer salt.

If your spoons aren’t that close and if you do care, I say replace the set.

Yep, more accurate with table salt. Just a few grains fell off when I leveled the tbsp; I’d consider this perfect:

yeah, and the fountain drink containers at the quick shops don't hold what they have stamped on the side, unless all of my pyrex measuring cups are wrong ...

ice to the line, and then fill. barely holds an old-fashioned can of soda ... I always meant to write a story about that, and piss off the fast food industry, or the cup makers ...

You should write that Bragu. What would your opening title say?

Maybe something like They're too much into their cups to measure up?

Chase, the butter thing has come up before. Yes, here in Canada it comes in a 1 lb block, which sometimes has the measurements marked on the wrapper. My problem is, by the time I get to the bottom of my slice, I’ve usually cut it crooked. My grocery store has a brand that does come I. 1/2 cup sticks and for baking I like that. However, it’s almost twice the cost of the block. But usually for baking I’ll splurge for it.

FOAS, I think finer salt would make your recipes much saltier because you'd have a lot more salt in the tsp than you would with kosher salt. Just for fun, now try your experiment with sugar and see what happens. Then measure a tsp of coffee grounds and re measure the same beans after grinding to various degrees. It is more the size of the grains of what you are measuring than anything else, indifferent results.

My best friend since sixth grade is a food scientist, so that makes me a know-it-all by virtue of an almost sixty year friendship. ;-)

Bragu, my daughter's husband is a pathologist and my son's wife is a professor of psychology. You should hear those two idiots argue about what part of the line on a Pyrex measuring cup you are supposed to use - top, bottom or middle! omg they spend more time measuring, leveling, calibrating, remeasuring to be sure than you can imagine.

And the best part is, everyone in the family thinks that I am the best cook!!!

Sheesh - Yes, I regularly substitute kosher salt when regular salt is called for or implied, for automatic salt reduction. But the point in changing from kosher to table in my “does three teaspoons equal a tablespoon” experiment with was that due to the courser grain, the leveling with a straight edge tended agitate and push out more salt than intended, making the results less reliable.