You like it very well done?
You like it very well done?
Er, you missed that itâs a NY Times recipe and that Americans use Fahrenheit?
Sorry Iâd assumed that was self-evidentâŚ
My apologies Dr H, I was only trying to draw attention to the units. It was self-evident to me that the author meant Fahrenheit because she says set the oven to 350 degrees and I have never used a domestic oven capable of doing that in centigrade.
Not everyone knows the NY Times and if they did, it would not be obvious whether the article was in the domestic or international edition. Since 95% of the worldâs population lives in countries where the metric system is the only legal system of measurement it might be assumed that an international edition would use Centigrade.
If you read many posts about air fryers you will eventually come across several complaints where food is undercooked. It frequently turns out that the person was cooking in a device set to Fahrenheit following a recipe using Centigrade.
The USA went metric in 1975 but it was not made compulsory (as in UK) so its uptake was rather haphazard â with disastrous consequences. In 1999 a Mars lander crashed into the planet because one part of the team was using Kilometres and another part Miles.
Sorry to be pedantic but, as an ex surveyor, units of measurement is my thing. When I pass on recipes, I do use units that people are comfortable with but I always include the amount in grams (the only unit I personally use) partly to avoid ambiguity (but there are other reasons).
It WAS an interesting recipe however and if it turns out to be as successful as it sounds, it will go in my personal recipe book. Thanks for posting.
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UK still using miles (and pints for beer)
And baskets containing a pound (lb) of fruit and veg on market stalls.
I think of that as the Spanish (perhaps Andalusian, or even Sevilian) version, because thatâs the only place (apart from here, now!) Iâve seen it.
And delicious.
Of course, your inference is correct, but our oven will exceed that.
The display shows PYRO when it is on its self-cleaning programme.
I was only comparing the two systems to make the point that misuse of units leads to confusion,
Even in UK, the existing legislation is full of exceptions as people are quick to point out but if people are that concerned, the information can be found here.
A burnt dinner is not quite as serious as an expensive Mars lander crash.
My oven maximum is 250 deg C
I had no idea you could cook on the âpyroâ setting. I thought the idea of that was to burn everything off.
You donât know my wife
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It reminds me of a Tender our commercial team was very excited about & asked if I could help them with pricing the maintenance costs and planned major works of the various sites across France.
The company Super Dry was project-managed in the UK. When I converted the Cad plans from Sq feet into metric⌠Well, they werenât so excited.
This has been a constant argument on a particular US based tech blog that I frequent. Despite officially using US Imperial measurements, certain sectors of US industry do now use metric measurements, mainly because international partners do. NASA for one do after the debacle of the Mars Climate Orbiter. There are people who dislike this and view it as European Imperialism, which is stupid as metric is pretty universal now.
Edit: I see you mentioned the Mars Climate Orbiter. NASA switched to metric several years after that as a direct result of this. It took that long to convert all their systems and retrain people.
So, you donât use âcupsâ then. A particularly stupid way to accurately measure many things.
Only when measuring ladies undergarments.
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A US âcupâ sort of makes sense within its own system, as long as everyone agrees that it means 8.45 imperial fluid ounces or (approx) 240ml.
Unfortunately even that only works in the US, as an Australian/Canadian/South African âCupâ is 250ml. 
And there is no objective way of knowing how big a âcupâ is, whereas a centilitre is also 100 millilitres or one tenth of a litre.
Overall the biggest drawback of the imperial system is that its units of measurement do not relate to each other in any kind of logical way, unlike metric where a) everything is decimal and b) units are directly related to each other e.g. a gram is the mass of water that would fill a 1 centimeter cube.
Anyone can do what they like in the privacy of their own kitchen but it is my belief, if you want to share your recipe with someone else, you should be more thoughtful.
Many words sound the same but mean something else. For example, if a recipe calls for a cup of flour, does that mean an English cup, an American cup, a European cup or even a Japanese cup? If it is an American cup, does that mean an American Standard Cup or an American legal cup? Does it matter?
Well a Japanese cup is 200 milliliters and an English cup is 284 milliliters. The difference is almost one third in volume.
Is it a scooped cup of flour for example, or is it leveled? Do you sift it to remove any air pockets or pack it down tightly?
My preference, when sharing, is to give the weight I used when making the recipe in grams. Then I put in brackets afterwards the number of cups (or whatever other ridiculous units seem to be preferred)
Personally I use grams for everything â even liquids because:-
Unambiguous
Accurate
Requires only one measuring device so declutters
Less things to wash up
Makes it easy to perform mathematical operations e.g:-
Scale recipes to account for available ingredient or number of portions
Calculate cost of dish and/or individual portion
Calculate carbohydrates, calories, glucose, etc etc per dish/portion
Oh, and donât even mention sticks of butter
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Surely there is no issue within the context of an individual recipe provided the recipe itself is consistent? A recipe is merely an indication of the relative quantities of one ingredient to another. So, two cups of this, half a cup of that, and so on.
The real challenge is when you are trying to get a recipe from someone (ie OH) who works on the basis of âa bit of thisâ and a âbit of thatâ. And since the recipe changes each time the âbitâ next time may be quite different.
Heâs an excellent cook. 
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But when a cup of something of variable size can give a completely different volume and weight of a substance (due to packing in the cup), and still be a cup then I really donât think it makes sense. If you want a reliable amount of a substance then the only way is to weigh it.
People who do that sort of thing, with confidence, usually are very good cooks.
Donât say that near a metrologist
A gram is 1/1000th of a kilogram (which is the base SI unit of mass).
It *was* defined as the mass of 1l of water (though ISTR that there were problems with the physical standard for the litre which meant that, in turn, the kg was slightly off).
But it has been defined in terms of the second, the metre and the Planck constant since 2019.