English units of measure (and a touch of Brit lit)

[eloise_herisson]

Carol:
> Here's a link on the history of English units of measurement that may
> be of interest to some of you:
> 
> http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/custom.html
> 
> "Cup" isn't mentioned (maybe because it has to do with cooking rather
> than commerce?) but fluid ounces are.

It's not mentioned because we don't use the cup as a measure over here 
(unless following a US recipe, of course). You can buy sets of 
measuring cups here (I actually use mine chiefly for making porridge), 
but British recipes measure dry ingrediants by weight/spoonfuls and 
liquid ones by fluid ounces/cls or spoonfuls. Measuring jugs often also 
have a scale on them which indicates the equivalent weights of 
sugar/flour but basically we cook by weight rather than volume.

My problem is that I'm old enough to have started cooking in pre-metric 
days and I use balance scales with imperial weights. Increasingly 
recipes use only metric measurements. I do take a certain satisfaction 
in my metric-age daughters all following imperial recipes, though.

~Eloise