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In case you are wondering how this works in practice, American butter typically comes in "sticks". Each stick weighs 1/4 pound, and is individually wrapped in
by nkurz 3y ago
In case you are wondering how this works in practice, American butter typically comes in "sticks". Each stick weighs 1/4 pound, and is individually wrapped in foil or paper. These wrappers are typically marked in Tablespoon increments with 8 Tablespoons (1/2 cup) per stick. Measuring Tablespoons of butter just involves looking at the markings on the stick (or visually estimating the number of 8ths) and cutting off the chunk that one needs. Measuring major fractions of cups is just counting sticks.
- Karellen 3y agoThat does provide a method to the madness, thanks. But... butter being measured in "cups" and "tablespoons", which are multiples/fractions of a 1/4lb block, is therefore fundamentally a unit of weight, not volume?!? That's even more wild.
- Karellen 3y agoAlso, that will greatly simplify the conversion process for me in the future. Previously, when I've come across a US recipe requiring cups of butter, I've looked up the size of a US cup - which is given in fl.oz - converted that to ml, and then found a good estimate for the density of butter, and used that to convert to a weight in grams - which I can then measure easily. If I'd known that "a cup of butter" was not really meant to be an actual "cup" measurement, and was actually shorthand (longhand?) for "0.5lb butter", that would have made conversion So. Much. Easier. Seriously, wtf. (I take it that other "cup" measurements are actually meant to be volume measurements, and I should measure cups of flour/sugar/etc... (and liquids, obviously) in volume-marked measuring containers?)