SC - interesting URL - food shopping!

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Tara Sersen wrote:

> Now, to start a documentation war ;) if there is little documentation for cooks
> measuring things (i.e. the recipes don't usually list measurements,) how can
> we assume they DID?  And, if we can't assume that they did because no documentation
> supports this claim, what assumption are we left with other than that they eyeballed
> measurements?

Occasonally recipes _will_ list measurements in a rudimentary way: a
gallon of wine, a dozen eggs and do away half the whites, an ounce of
cinnamon, an eggshell full of salt, a piece of butter the size of an
egg, etc. Recipes will also fairly frequently provide descriptive
guidelines: it should be thick, loke that it be stondyng, make it sharp
with vinegar, add sugar to abate the sharpness of the vinegar, etc.

If a recipe does give a known quantity and then goes on to say, for
example, how thick it should be, it ought to be possible to deduce some
kind of ballpark estimate for how much bread to include.

I agree that cooks eyeball measurements all the time; they often don't
have time for anything else. But it is informed eyeballing based both on
experience and the desire to have a consistent finished product. That
doesn't mean they're not measuring, it just means they aren't using
measuring cups.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com