It happened a lot in our nation’s history that folks would have relatively simple kitchens not equipped with scales or even a set of measuring cups, so eating vessels and utensils would be used. A lot of staple American baked goods like biscuits are really more about feeling the consistency of the dough than sticking to a recipe anyway, so laboratory precision is not necessary.
At some point the cup got codified as half a pint, or 8 fluid ounces, or slightly under 0.125L. A tablespoon is 1/2 of a fluid ounce and thus 1/16th of a cup. A teaspoon is 1/3 of a tablespoon.
It works out that tea- and tablespoons are ~ 4.928 and 14.786 mL respectively. The medicine industry, which actually does everything in metric and has for decades now, often writes dosing instructions in metric tea- or tablespoons of 5mL and 15mL respectively. For example, my bottle of Listerine mouthwash says in its instructions “swish 10mL (2 teapoonfuls) between your teeth for 30 seconds…”
Believe it or not we also know how long an inch is, too.
Yeah I get why it makes sense to have recipes with “add about a cup of X”, but it surprises me that someone decided to make it an official unit of an exactly defined amount
The amount measured by a typical tea or coffee cup is approximately 1/2 US Pint, so when it comes time to codify it that’s a reasonable place to put it.
Anything else you wish to artificially complicate?
This entire argument is obviously ridiculous from both sides but the main difference between the metric system and the Imperial system in this context is that almost everyone uses the metric system while pretty much only the USA uses the Imperial system.
So the Imperial system can be blamed for any faults of the USA. But the opposite is ridiculous since that’s the standard. That would be like blaming Hitler on legs.
And yes again, it’s incredibly ridiculous to blame anything on a system of measurement but if you are gonna do it the Imperial system makes way more sense to blame.
how much is a cup in non freedom units?
Freedom units were imported from Britan.
And then bastardised.
Chad UK/Irish Imperial pint: 568ml
Virgin US Customary Unit pint: 473ml
In liberté units.
239.59 ml
Edit: switched out the original number for the correct number
Wow I had not even realised that this would actually be a well defined unit. I thought it was like “add a spoon of sugar” in recipes.
I just realized 59.15 ml is 1/4 of a cup while 1 cup is 239.59 ml
Annoyingly, the US has two different “cups”
US legal units puts it as 240ml
US Customary Units puts it at 236.59ml
Then there’s Imperial cups, which is 284.13ml
Then there’s the metric cup at 250ml
It happened a lot in our nation’s history that folks would have relatively simple kitchens not equipped with scales or even a set of measuring cups, so eating vessels and utensils would be used. A lot of staple American baked goods like biscuits are really more about feeling the consistency of the dough than sticking to a recipe anyway, so laboratory precision is not necessary.
At some point the cup got codified as half a pint, or 8 fluid ounces, or slightly under 0.125L. A tablespoon is 1/2 of a fluid ounce and thus 1/16th of a cup. A teaspoon is 1/3 of a tablespoon.
It works out that tea- and tablespoons are ~ 4.928 and 14.786 mL respectively. The medicine industry, which actually does everything in metric and has for decades now, often writes dosing instructions in metric tea- or tablespoons of 5mL and 15mL respectively. For example, my bottle of Listerine mouthwash says in its instructions “swish 10mL (2 teapoonfuls) between your teeth for 30 seconds…”
Believe it or not we also know how long an inch is, too.
Yeah I get why it makes sense to have recipes with “add about a cup of X”, but it surprises me that someone decided to make it an official unit of an exactly defined amount
It boggles your mind that the units people were actually using became standardized?
not all cups are the same so why would anyone say “this is now the exact amount of a cup”?
The amount measured by a typical tea or coffee cup is approximately 1/2 US Pint, so when it comes time to codify it that’s a reasonable place to put it.
Anything else you wish to artificially complicate?
Freedom units should be replaced with something like racist units or genocide units or orange units
The freedom was always sarcastic
soon enough it will be nazi units
I tend to use moon landing units.
Didn’t the Apollo missions use metric, though?
So the metric units? Those were used by racists and genocidal tyrants throughout history.
Racism isn’t a defining characteristic of all metric users though .
I didn’t say it was. Just that has been quite popular with those types of defective people over the history of the use of the metric system.
The Imperial system has it’s own special though.
This entire argument is obviously ridiculous from both sides but the main difference between the metric system and the Imperial system in this context is that almost everyone uses the metric system while pretty much only the USA uses the Imperial system.
So the Imperial system can be blamed for any faults of the USA. But the opposite is ridiculous since that’s the standard. That would be like blaming Hitler on legs.
And yes again, it’s incredibly ridiculous to blame anything on a system of measurement but if you are gonna do it the Imperial system makes way more sense to blame.