Measures in TVWB Recipes


 
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Albert Sanchez

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Colleagues,

Pardon this silly question /infopop/emoticons/icon_redface.gif

How should we interpret ounces in a recipe? For example:

The Apple Brined Whole Turkey Brine specifies 4 oz. of sliced ginger.

Would that be 4 oz. in weight, or 4 oz. per the measuring cup? Same thing with the specified 16 oz. of brown sugar. Is it 16 oz by weight or by the measuring cup. /infopop/emoticons/icon_confused.gif

-Albert
 
I believe oz. refers to weight while cup refers to a measure of size. I use a small kitchen scale to measure 4 oz. of sliced ginger.
 
I believe only liquids and powders are measured using "liquid measures" meaning with a measuring cup. Thus 4oz sliced ginger would be weighed on a scale, while the brown sugar would be measured in a measuring cup.

RAMBLING MEASUREMENT LESSON:
Water is the stardard for nearly all measurement bases, and when you see that a "cup" is 16oz that means water weighs 16oz when filled in a 16oz cup. Obviously molten lead would weigh more, while oil would weigh less. Water is used for calories and many other standards as well. Water is also used for Celsuis temperatures, with 0 being freezing and 100 boiling at sea level. "Sea level" is the level at New York harbor as I recall. OK, now I'm really rambling. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif
 
Umm, a cup is 8 liquid ounces, of which there are 16 in a gallon, which weighs 8.34 lbs. So, a cup weighs .52125 lbs, or a little more than 8 ounces by weight. 16 liquid ounces of water, therefore would weigh 1.0425 pounds, or 16.68 ounces. But to say that 16 ounces of water roughly weighs 16 ounces for cooking purposes is entirely reasonable.
 
Very interesting.

Oh well, without knowing , I went with 4oz of ginger per the measuring cup - which I think is far less than 4oz by weight.

Maybe I'll get a scale a lunch time and run home to add more ginger to the brine in the frig!!

Thanks guys!

-Albert
 
The 8 vs. 16 was a "duh" mistake, and I must be thinking metric with the water based measures. I hate English measures anyway, this country realllly needs to change to metric since it makes so much more sense. If we were using metric this thread never would have been started in the first place.

It's stupid to have to remember all those arbitraty English measures factors such as 16oz to a pound, 12" to a foot, 3' to a yard, 8oz to a cup,. 5124' (or whatever it is) to a mile ... come on! Metric is totally easy, all factors are multiples of ten.

(As an anecdote a brainy friend in college once boasted he could do any English to metric conversion in his head. "Try me" he taunted. I asked him "how many angstroms in a mile?" and he thought for a moment than walked away. It was funny.)
 
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