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I agree that weighting is the key to stability for professional cooks and bakers, but up to a gram or not depends on what you're weighting, how much of it, and

I agree that weighting is the key to stability for professional cooks and bakers, but up to a gram or not depends on what you're weighting, how much of it, and for what purpose (and yes, the gram itself as a unit is irrelevant). This is engineering tolerance and it's same in every field; even a fine metalworker can be imprecise provided he stays within the defined range. Yet for part-time cooks as most of us are weighting is impractical: we don't have scales, and even if we do the amounts are usually too small. And stability is not necessary the goal :) For home cooks the usual task is to scale a recipe up or down and with cooking units the math is much simpler. Another thing about cooking units is that the number of different units helps to convey that engineering tolerance I've mentioned; the smaller the unit, the less the tolerance. When everything is expressed in one unit, you need to specify the tolerance explicitly.

ajmurmann 12y ago
This is a very American view. When I grew up in Germany EVERYONE had a scale for cooking because every recipe gives all larger quantities in grams. I think the only exception is the difference is the equivalent of "a pinch". When I moved to the US I didn't have a scale and most recipes I cooked were American and I ended up using cups etc. I got totally used ot it after a while and everything was fine. However, I love cooing and wanted to get more into modernist cuisine. That pretty much requires a scale. Having used a scale for cooking again I cannot overstate how incredibly convenient it is. It saves a lot of time and cleaning of measuring devices. You just put your container (pot, bowl or whatever you will use later for processing) onto the scale; zero the scale; and start puring in the first ingredients till you go tthe right amount. Then you just zero the scale again and do the next ingredients. No need to rinse measuring cups in between. The metric system also has the added benefit that 1 liter translates for water based liquids to 1kg which means you again just pour the liquid into your bowl that's on the scale. The scale has pretty much only upsides. The downside that most people in the US don't have a scale is only a downside because culturally US Americans don't use scales for cooking. On the flip side you can say that measuring cups are incovenient because Europeans don't have them.
- Mikhail_Edoshin 12y ago
  I love to cook myself and I agree that using scales yields a more stable result (provided the ingredients are stable). But to be simpler than volume-based units the scales have to be pretty sophisticated, like the modern electronic scales. Would the process be simpler if the scales could not zero-out on a weight and you'd have to weight the ingredients separately or do the math mentally? Or if they were mechanical and thus harder to read? Or if they were balance scales with pans and separate iron masses? :) Well, this is too much, perhaps, but I remember using such scales to mix solutions for photographic process. But not for cooking; this would be completely unpractical. Of course, nowadays the scales are very smart and a pleasure to use. But here's the thing: with smart equipment we don't need to bother about being metric. It's not a problem for smart scales to display the weight in any unit imaginable. I think there must be culinary apps that convert between weight- and volume-based units to suit everyone's tastes and they're either free or cost less than $5. The proponents of metric system claim it's simple. Maybe, but it's a simplicity of a typewriter compared with a modern typesetting program. Why would anyone with a smartphone care about this kind of simplicity? For example, there's ISO 216 standard for paper sizes: A0, A1, A2, etc. The sizes form an interesting progression: each size is exactly 1/2 of the larger size. But how did they select the 1st size in the row, the A0? It's pretty interesting: the A0 size is exactly 1 square meter. I bet the designers of the standard though it would be be a feature, because the users (e.g. printers) will be able to use this fact to simplify their calculations; e.g. you need to print 1000 A4, you know it's 1/16 of A0 and the paper is 100g/sq.m., and you go from there. But I don't believe anyone does this kind of math nowadays; everyone has computers and printer jobs have much more variations in paper sizes and densities for this "simple" rule to be of practical use.

ajmurmann 12y ago

This is a very American view. When I grew up in Germany EVERYONE had a scale for cooking because every recipe gives all larger quantities in grams. I think the only exception is the difference is the equivalent of "a pinch". When I moved to the US I didn't have a scale and most recipes I cooked were American and I ended up using cups etc. I got totally used ot it after a while and everything was fine. However, I love cooing and wanted to get more into modernist cuisine. That pretty much requires a scale. Having used a scale for cooking again I cannot overstate how incredibly convenient it is. It saves a lot of time and cleaning of measuring devices. You just put your container (pot, bowl or whatever you will use later for processing) onto the scale; zero the scale; and start puring in the first ingredients till you go tthe right amount. Then you just zero the scale again and do the next ingredients. No need to rinse measuring cups in between. The metric system also has the added benefit that 1 liter translates for water based liquids to 1kg which means you again just pour the liquid into your bowl that's on the scale. The scale has pretty much only upsides. The downside that most people in the US don't have a scale is only a downside because culturally US Americans don't use scales for cooking. On the flip side you can say that measuring cups are incovenient because Europeans don't have them.

Mikhail_Edoshin 12y ago
I love to cook myself and I agree that using scales yields a more stable result (provided the ingredients are stable). But to be simpler than volume-based units the scales have to be pretty sophisticated, like the modern electronic scales. Would the process be simpler if the scales could not zero-out on a weight and you'd have to weight the ingredients separately or do the math mentally? Or if they were mechanical and thus harder to read? Or if they were balance scales with pans and separate iron masses? :) Well, this is too much, perhaps, but I remember using such scales to mix solutions for photographic process. But not for cooking; this would be completely unpractical. Of course, nowadays the scales are very smart and a pleasure to use. But here's the thing: with smart equipment we don't need to bother about being metric. It's not a problem for smart scales to display the weight in any unit imaginable. I think there must be culinary apps that convert between weight- and volume-based units to suit everyone's tastes and they're either free or cost less than $5. The proponents of metric system claim it's simple. Maybe, but it's a simplicity of a typewriter compared with a modern typesetting program. Why would anyone with a smartphone care about this kind of simplicity? For example, there's ISO 216 standard for paper sizes: A0, A1, A2, etc. The sizes form an interesting progression: each size is exactly 1/2 of the larger size. But how did they select the 1st size in the row, the A0? It's pretty interesting: the A0 size is exactly 1 square meter. I bet the designers of the standard though it would be be a feature, because the users (e.g. printers) will be able to use this fact to simplify their calculations; e.g. you need to print 1000 A4, you know it's 1/16 of A0 and the paper is 100g/sq.m., and you go from there. But I don't believe anyone does this kind of math nowadays; everyone has computers and printer jobs have much more variations in paper sizes and densities for this "simple" rule to be of practical use.