SC - weights and measures

[Vincent Cuenca]

Here's another riddle for the list:

De Nola gives a system of weights and measures for spices in his recipe for 
Duke's Powder:
"And the weights for spices sold in the shops are thus: one pound is twelve 
ounces; one ounce, eight drachms; one drachm, three scruples: another way to 
understand this more clearly: a drachm weighs three dineros and a scruple 
weighs twenty grains of wheat."

This sounds a lot like the troy scale.  Elsewhere, De Nola uses the word 
"cuarteron" to measure cheese and sugar and defines it as four Castilian 
ounces.  The 1726 RAE defines a cuarteron as "generally understood to be the 
fourth part of a pound." (Note: Taillevent uses the same measure for sugar, 
in the "Pie of Raw Pears" recipe.)  We can reasonably assume that sugar was 
considered a spice, and so ostensibly would be weighed out with the same 
scales as other spices. So, by this logic, is a cuarteron of sugar the same 
as a cuarteron of cheese, or flour, or almonds? Is it three troy ounces, 
rather than four Castilian (or standard) ounces?

Vicente
(who already has an opinion on this, but wants to bounce it off everybody 
else)
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