View Full Version : A victory for us Brits? (or how the EU learned to love the pound)
Sounds like we can still continue to use our lbs and ozs alongside the kg and gms...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6637587.stm
Seems like the US still using imperial measures might have had an influence.
Great as far as I am concerned as I am still an Imperial guy...:D
Hmmm...but all the American recipes I have use "cups", weight doesn't seem to come into it at all...so I have recipes with "cups", recipes with lbs and ozs and metric recipes...:confused and most ingredients I buy are sold/packaged in kgs/gms.
I don't really think in Imperial any more and I would much rather have one system for everything!
Except.... I must admit I would always think of new babies weighing in the Imperial way!;)
At last some good news. Try as I might I can't think metric, even have to convert cms. into ins. As for kilos and grammes or whatever - how can you cook with them? What is a litre - I have no idea? If they really wanted us to go metric they should have done what they did with the currency - complete switch from d to p (who remembers d now I wonder, as in lsd). But they didn't so we've muddled along with both. I suppose since children are all taught metric, the imperial measures will die out eventually with the older generation.
If they really wanted us to go metric they should have done what they did with the currency - complete switch from d to p (who remembers d now I wonder, as in lsd).
Ah, now I do remember that, badger....I was a student in Aberdeen at the time...and it was really quite challenging sorting out my busfare! :eek:
Aren't "cups" a dry, as well as wet, measure?
It confuses the hell out of me when I am throwing together some dish which has US quantities in the recipe.
But I still ask for a ¼lb or ½lb of meat from the deli counter and think in miles rather than kilometres.
And you're right badger, when us old crusty Imperialists have gulped our last cubic inch of O2 that'll be the end of it....
You're right MadPict, you bake with cups of flour, sugar, butter...never sure how accurate it is, but it is easy!
When I was just a little Angel [lol] I remember being sent out most days to buy a "fourpit" (?sp) of Kerr's Pinks (potatoes). No idea know what that was, would it have been a quarter of a stone?
I remember all those obscure Imperial measurements printed on the backs of school jotters, does anybody remember what some of these were? :confused
Angela, you are correct a Forpet was 3 and a half pounds i.e. a quarter of a stone :lol:
The trouble with the metric system was that it was introduced in a half-baked manner. We should have gone either fully metric bar nothing or stayed the way we were. I think this backtrack is a victory for the Americans rather than the Brits though I think we will shall see it as a victory.
I would like the guy who got done for selling stuff in Imperial to have a posthumous pardon, he died in 2004 as a convicted criminal, it's only reet!
The trouble with the metric system was that it was introduced in a half-baked manner. We should have gone either fully metric bar nothing or stayed the way we were.
Agreed why drive for miles on a litre of petrol?
You're right MadPict, you bake with cups of flour, sugar, butter...never sure how accurate it is, but it is easy!
To make matters worse there are US measuring cups and UK measuring cups and they hold different quantities for the same unit - a cup. I guess that is a bit like the amount of liquid in a gallon.
Another reason why weighing is better - Is it a cup of sifted flour, a cup of flour which is then sifted, or a cup of flour already sifted?
Weight for dry measure and butter is much easier and I have converted all my recipes to weight using conversion charts.I believe professional bakers on both side of the pond weigh their dry goods.
j4bberw0ck
09-May-07, 21:35
Years ago I asked an American friend (well at the time she was somewhat more than a friend, but that's life :lol: ) how you cook with a volumetric measure like "cups".
She looked at me and said "Look. It just works, OK?"
I gulped, and crawled quickly back under the cheese with all the other maggots :lol:
Years ago I asked an American friend (well at the time she was somewhat more than a friend, but that's life ) how you cook with a volumetric measure like "cups".
She looked at me and said "Look. It just works, OK?"
I gulped, and crawled quickly back under the cheese with all the other maggots
The first recipe I used with cups....well, I was a novice baker and thought it meant a teacup, so that's what I used. I didn't have any measuring cups anyway:roll:
It was a recipe for banana bread - always a great success and incredibly easy to make.
I suppose as long as I used the same cup every time, the quantities were consistent....so your "friend" was right! [lol]
I usually measure ingredients in handfuls and pinches, my recipies seem to work, but I can never really pass them on as everyone has different sized hands [lol]
Metalattakk
09-May-07, 23:32
I can use both metric and imperial measures easily enough, converting (approximately enough) between the two quite swiftly as I go.
However when cooking, I prefer a gowkan-fu' over the American 'cups' measurement. ;)
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