5 ms·

Now if you can add a feature to convert Cups -> Grams correctly then you've got my money!

by jspash 6y ago

CGamesPlay 6y ago
Why is cups->mL not sufficient? Cups->grams just seems more prone to errors in general.
- barbegal 6y ago
  Because most Europeans use weighing scales rather than volumetric measurements. When I'm baking I put the bowl on the scales and pour in the ingredients. When recipes say 1tbsp or 2tsp it gets me annoyed because if they had converted to grams I could just pour those ingredients straight in too but instead I need to get out my volumetric measures (or in most cases just guess and hope it doesn't matter too much)
  - DavidVoid 6y ago
    Huh, here in Sweden we use volumetric measurement for most things (milk, flour, sugar, etc.), usually in milli- centi- or deciliter. The exception is usually butter, which is measured in grams (and conveniently indicated on the packaging).
    - gindely 6y ago
      Well, the conveniently indicated grams on the packet are not units of weight - they're units of volume. So you've got two kinds of units of volume in your recipes: milli/centi/decilitres, and grams of butter. But it's fairer than the grams of flour I've been ranting about elsewhere here because at least the manufacturer can have some responsibility for fine tuning it to their product!
      - qtk8 6y ago
        Do you have any source for your claim that "grams of butter", "grams of flour" and "grams of sugar" do not all refer to the SI unit "gram"? I live in Europe and have always weighed exactly 100g on the scale, whether I was asked for 100 grams of butter, sugar or flour.
        SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
        They are the SI unit of mass. He's just saying that because it's indicated by lines on the package that the actual measurement is done in volume, and the conversion is implicit by the scaling. Where he goes wrong is in thinking that it's implying that "grams of butter" is a unit of volume.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >When recipes say 1tbsp or 2tsp it gets me annoyed because if they had converted to grams I could just pour those ingredients straight in too but instead I need to get out my volumetric measures Are kitchen scales accurate enough for such tiny measurements? 1 teaspoon is 5ml, so if your scale only has 1g of precision you're looking at up to a 10℅ variance (assuming you're measuring water), and that's assuming its accurate at that range. It gets worse when you need to deal with fractional teaspoons.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Are kitchen scales accurate enough for such tiny measurements Yes, and there are lots of recipes that use mass rather than volumetric measurements. For solids, in fact, many sources prefer this because consistency of packing density and other user factors that effect consistency with volumetric measure are far worse than with mass measured with a kitchen scale.
    - barbegal 6y ago
      Yes below 5g it's not that accurate but I've never seen a recipe demand precision like 1.3tsp so if anything you can get more accuracy with weight.
- adwww 6y ago
  ML is fine for liquids, but you wouldn't (or shouldn't) measure flour in ml.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    Isn’t a cup defined as 250mL? Unless you’re in the USA, in which case a cup is 236.5882365mL exactly.
    - PeterisP 6y ago
      If you need a particular amount of flour, you can't express it in volume, since 250ml of flour may be too much or too little depending on how tightly the flour is packed. For reliable baking, measuring flour by volume is too inaccurate, you need to weigh it so you know how much flour actually went into that cup.
  - gindely 6y ago
    Well, tell that to Europeans, who don't use millilitres to measure their flour or sugar by volume - they use bizarre units of volume called "grams of flour" or "grams of sugar". Check their cup measures! It's crazy. Apparently it works perfectly fine for household cooking to use units of volume for flour and sugar. Close enough is good enough!
hairtuq 6y ago
I wrote a browser extension that does this (although it will of course occasionally get something wrong): https://github.com/falk-hueffner/metric-cooking https://github.com/falk-hueffner/metric-cooking
- mosselman 6y ago
  Just make sure to send @jspash your bank details or bitcoin wallet address so he can give you the money he was talking about.
encom 6y ago
I don't know how americans manage to feed themselves, while measuring things with cups! It's such a bizarre and archaic unit. Like the english stone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)
- jeremydavid 6y ago
  I'm not American (Canadian living in Germany) and I have to say that I find using cups/spoons is much easier than pulling out a scale and weighing everything. Just grab a measuring cup / spoon (every house has a set of standard sized measuring cups and spoons) fill it up to the right amount and dump it in.
  - Guest0918231 6y ago
    Cups work great for certain things, such as a cup of water, sugar, flour, or peanuts. It gets difficult in other situations though, like trying to measure a cup of spinach, strawberries, or ice, because the measurement greatly varies depending on how the items are packed or arranged in the space.
    - tobr 6y ago
      Measuring volume is not great for flour for the same reason, it contains very different amounts of air depending on whether it’s packed or sifted.
      - gindely 6y ago
        Which is why most recipes say something like "1 cup of flour, sifted" - you have to measure it, then sift it.
        frank2 6y ago
        Uh...
        tobr 6y ago
kevinwuhoo 6y ago
I recently wrote a tiny site to do exactly this! It converts ingredients from volumes to weight. Check it out at https://bready.io/ https://bready.io/. Would love to hear any feedback ya'll might have! I imagine you all have also greatly increased the amount of baking you're doing while staying safe at home.
- jooz 6y ago
  Id love to do the conversion on both directions. Grams -> Volume (in caps, tbsp, or milliliters). Happens as well people may not have weigh scale.
- wzy 6y ago
  Have you considered making a public REST API available?
  - smilebot 6y ago
    I've been working on one recently. https://rapidapi.com/smilebot/api/food-unit-of-measurement-converter https://rapidapi.com/smilebot/api/food-unit-of-measurement-c... would love your feedback :)

Now if you can add a feature to convert Cups -> Grams correctly then you've got my money!

by jspash 6y ago

Now if you can add a feature to convert Cups -> Grams correctly then you've got my money!

CGamesPlay 6y ago

Why is cups->mL not sufficient? Cups->grams just seems more prone to errors in general.

barbegal 6y ago
Because most Europeans use weighing scales rather than volumetric measurements. When I'm baking I put the bowl on the scales and pour in the ingredients. When recipes say 1tbsp or 2tsp it gets me annoyed because if they had converted to grams I could just pour those ingredients straight in too but instead I need to get out my volumetric measures (or in most cases just guess and hope it doesn't matter too much)
- DavidVoid 6y ago
  Huh, here in Sweden we use volumetric measurement for most things (milk, flour, sugar, etc.), usually in milli- centi- or deciliter. The exception is usually butter, which is measured in grams (and conveniently indicated on the packaging).
  - gindely 6y ago
    Well, the conveniently indicated grams on the packet are not units of weight - they're units of volume. So you've got two kinds of units of volume in your recipes: milli/centi/decilitres, and grams of butter. But it's fairer than the grams of flour I've been ranting about elsewhere here because at least the manufacturer can have some responsibility for fine tuning it to their product!
    - qtk8 6y ago
      Do you have any source for your claim that "grams of butter", "grams of flour" and "grams of sugar" do not all refer to the SI unit "gram"? I live in Europe and have always weighed exactly 100g on the scale, whether I was asked for 100 grams of butter, sugar or flour.
      - SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
        They are the SI unit of mass. He's just saying that because it's indicated by lines on the package that the actual measurement is done in volume, and the conversion is implicit by the scaling. Where he goes wrong is in thinking that it's implying that "grams of butter" is a unit of volume.
- gruez 6y ago
  >When recipes say 1tbsp or 2tsp it gets me annoyed because if they had converted to grams I could just pour those ingredients straight in too but instead I need to get out my volumetric measures Are kitchen scales accurate enough for such tiny measurements? 1 teaspoon is 5ml, so if your scale only has 1g of precision you're looking at up to a 10℅ variance (assuming you're measuring water), and that's assuming its accurate at that range. It gets worse when you need to deal with fractional teaspoons.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Are kitchen scales accurate enough for such tiny measurements Yes, and there are lots of recipes that use mass rather than volumetric measurements. For solids, in fact, many sources prefer this because consistency of packing density and other user factors that effect consistency with volumetric measure are far worse than with mass measured with a kitchen scale.
  - barbegal 6y ago
    Yes below 5g it's not that accurate but I've never seen a recipe demand precision like 1.3tsp so if anything you can get more accuracy with weight.
adwww 6y ago
ML is fine for liquids, but you wouldn't (or shouldn't) measure flour in ml.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  Isn’t a cup defined as 250mL? Unless you’re in the USA, in which case a cup is 236.5882365mL exactly.
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    If you need a particular amount of flour, you can't express it in volume, since 250ml of flour may be too much or too little depending on how tightly the flour is packed. For reliable baking, measuring flour by volume is too inaccurate, you need to weigh it so you know how much flour actually went into that cup.
- gindely 6y ago
  Well, tell that to Europeans, who don't use millilitres to measure their flour or sugar by volume - they use bizarre units of volume called "grams of flour" or "grams of sugar". Check their cup measures! It's crazy. Apparently it works perfectly fine for household cooking to use units of volume for flour and sugar. Close enough is good enough!

hairtuq 6y ago

I wrote a browser extension that does this (although it will of course occasionally get something wrong): https://github.com/falk-hueffner/metric-cooking https://github.com/falk-hueffner/metric-cooking

mosselman 6y ago
Just make sure to send @jspash your bank details or bitcoin wallet address so he can give you the money he was talking about.

encom 6y ago

I don't know how americans manage to feed themselves, while measuring things with cups! It's such a bizarre and archaic unit. Like the english stone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)

jeremydavid 6y ago
I'm not American (Canadian living in Germany) and I have to say that I find using cups/spoons is much easier than pulling out a scale and weighing everything. Just grab a measuring cup / spoon (every house has a set of standard sized measuring cups and spoons) fill it up to the right amount and dump it in.
- Guest0918231 6y ago
  Cups work great for certain things, such as a cup of water, sugar, flour, or peanuts. It gets difficult in other situations though, like trying to measure a cup of spinach, strawberries, or ice, because the measurement greatly varies depending on how the items are packed or arranged in the space.
  - tobr 6y ago
    Measuring volume is not great for flour for the same reason, it contains very different amounts of air depending on whether it’s packed or sifted.
    - gindely 6y ago
      Which is why most recipes say something like "1 cup of flour, sifted" - you have to measure it, then sift it.
      - frank2 6y ago
        Uh...
      - tobr 6y ago

kevinwuhoo 6y ago

I recently wrote a tiny site to do exactly this! It converts ingredients from volumes to weight. Check it out at https://bready.io/ https://bready.io/. Would love to hear any feedback ya'll might have! I imagine you all have also greatly increased the amount of baking you're doing while staying safe at home.

jooz 6y ago
Id love to do the conversion on both directions. Grams -> Volume (in caps, tbsp, or milliliters). Happens as well people may not have weigh scale.
wzy 6y ago
Have you considered making a public REST API available?
- smilebot 6y ago
  I've been working on one recently. https://rapidapi.com/smilebot/api/food-unit-of-measurement-converter https://rapidapi.com/smilebot/api/food-unit-of-measurement-c... would love your feedback :)