Julian was making a recipe tonight and started on a rant: “What do they mean by a clove of garlic? These cloves are of wildly differing sizes. And how much chorizo (Spanish sausage) is one chorizo? You can buy chorizos of different sizes. You should write a blog post about this.” Okay, dear, here it is.
A little extra time spent measuring ingredients properly can produce a better final result. This is especially true in baking, where proportions are more exacting. Cooking is a bit more forgiving; however, some errors can render a dish inedible. Julian tells the story of the time one of his housemates made Welsh rarebit and thought the recipe called for 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper per single serving rather than per recipe. The final dish was way too spicy for anyone to eat.
Recipes published in cookbooks or online can be extremely vague on amounts. Julian went off on garlic and chorizo tonight. My issue of late is vegetable sizes. For example, what is a medium onion? Most sources don’t specify. Given the super-sizing of produce these days, what may have been a medium onion to my grandmother would be a small one today. Fruit size is even more problematic, and this can have adverse impacts on people with diabetes who have to watch their carbohydrate intake closely. It’s hard to find an apple in a grocery store that fits the definition of one carb exchange (15 grams). Here are our suggestions to promote clarity in measurements:
Weight is best. Many baking cookbooks will use weights of flour alongside volume measurements. This is because there can be a high variability in flour measurements, based on how you fill the measuring cup. If you sift or spoon flour into the cup, you’ll have less by weight than if you drag the cup through the container of flour. Unfortunately, most people don’t have scales and may not understand the importance of taring. (What’s taring, you ask? You weigh the measuring cup first, and then zero the scale before adding the ingredient.)
Volume is a distant second best. (See the previous paragraph.) Use a proper set of measuring cups and spoons, preferably metal, for solid ingredients. Use a clear glass or plastic measuring cup for liquids. Cups of solid ingredients should always be leveled off with a straight edge, but many people don’t bother with that. Brown sugar and shortening should be packed into the measuring cups and then leveled off. Set the liquid measuring cup on a surface and read the volume at eye level, not from above. If you come across an old recipe that called for a tea cup of milk, don’t substitute a coffee mug full of milk.
If the proportions look wrong on paper (or on the screen), they probably are wrong. Recipes are written by fallible human beings, and are often subjected to little or no editing by equally fallible individuals. In this case, trust your instinct.
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