Why do Americans measure everything in cups?

Apparently the French sent over a metric system for the Americans to use, but the ship was lost.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/28/574044232/how-pirates-of-the-caribbean-hijacked-americas-metric-system

I've seen numerous sources for this.

Watch some cooking shows on YouTube where they cook from two hundred year old cookbooks. Weighing stuff is a modern thing. All the “ye olde recipes” from Europe and the colonies were done in cups, spoons, and some other volume measurements we don’t use anymore like “jills”. (If they even bother to specify meaurements.)

The imperial system is a nightmare. A lot of us hate it and agree that metric is far easier. I grew up with the imperial system and still don't know the conversions between quarts, pints, ounces, and cups. Blame the French and British, we got it from them!

I'm currently calorie counting in order to lose weight and I weigh everything in grams because it's easier.

"Do Americans not own scales or something?"

For a good long while, no they didn't. For a large fraction of American history a typical home kitchen had no bespoke measuring equipment at all; but tea cups, tea spoons and table spoons were typically available and made to pretty similar sizes, plus if you always used the same ones the proportions would be roughly the same, so meh.

A lot of traditional recipes were written this way, and it has remained so by tradition. A system of inexpensive, easy to manufacture measuring cups and spoons became standard equipment by the mid-20th century, and hasn't changed to this day because it works just fine.

The US government is in the habit of publishing recipes with a deliberately low minimum equipment list. The United States Department of Agriculture for example conducts extensive testing on home canning recipes and methods, and deliberately writes their recipes to be used in poorly equipped kitchens, because the kind of folks who rely on putting up home grown vegetables for the winter don't tend to spend a lot of money on Sharper Image kitchen gadgetry. Flipping through my copy of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, I find about a third of recipes could be made using nothing but a mason jar or two as your only measuring tool, as most mason jars (excluding the deliberately decorative ones) have graduation marks in cups, ounces and milliliters molded into them.

Most Americans I know don’t even have a scale in their kitchen!

I (an American) always wonder what a cup of spinach is. Like I can really pack it into a cup or not and there is a huge difference.

Because it's quicker to just use a measuring cup than by weighing it out every time, I assume.

I do have a scale, but I mostly use it when portioning out a big chub of ground turkey or beef.

Volumetric measurements, like the imperial system, is largely in place due to tradition.

But no, most people do not own good food scales. They aren't pricey (I think mine was $25), but they are very uncommon. I don't think I've ever seen one in a store.

Cups, teaspoons, and tablespoons in this context are standardized units of measure. It is very common to find at least one set of measuring cups and spoons in a US kitchen. Scales are uncommon.

I use both. For flour, scales are far, far superior. For sugar, it does not really seem to matter. For small amounts, I suspect my tea/tablespoons might be more accurate than my scale...

Not that accuracy matters that much in a recipe using eggs. Chickens aren't necessarily known for precision...

Do Americans not own scales or something?

I do not own a kitchen scale. Outside of baking, volume works well enough.

I think it goes back to Fannie Farmer in 1896, who wrote the first major and comprehensive cookbook in English that used any kind of standard measurements. European cookbooks mostly used vague instructions without any standardized weights or numbers before that. At this point in the industrialized world standardized cup measures were relatively cheap and available. Scales were relatively bulky, expensive, and inaccurate in 1896. So the whole tradition got started, and most of the major cookbooks owed something to Fannie Farmer. Cookbooks that used standardized weights probably got started in other countries much later, when scales were becoming commonplace.

I'm not American but this is likely due to tradition. Recipe measures it in cups, you follow recipe, you get used to cups, then when writing your own recipe down you do it by cups.

As an American who has recently learned to love his scale, I'm with you 100%. With that being said, no, many Americans do not have kitchen scales.

Shutout to the one dude who downvoted literally every comment lol I hope you enjoyed it

I'm with you but I get it that sometimes it's convenient. My wife likes what we call "cup recipes" in baking where everything is measured in cups/glasses (this was a new thing couple of years ago where I live). It's very fast and convenient.

But yes, it gets out of hand. I mean "a cup of celery"? ... How? Why?

I'm always confused by their insistence to use fluid ounces.

An ounce is fine it's a measurement of mass. But how can you measure liquids by mass, when really what you mean is displacement, its like saying fluid kilograms, it's not a thing, it makes no sense.

I know Americans probably know what it means but everybody else doesn't have a clue. If you have 250 fluid oz of something is that like a bucket or a single droplet? Or is it a small booting lake, I have no idea at all.

American here but I do a lot of baking, I do own a scale and prefer to weigh ingredients because I'm amazed at the different quantities of flour I can get from cup to cup depending how packed the flour is or how I scoop it.

So many in the comments are talking about volume being more convenient but I find it so much more convenient to put a bowl on a scale, tare it, measure, and set it aside. Sure that’s more steps than using a cup, but when I have to fumble with a cup, a 1/3rd cup, a teaspoon, a 1/2 teaspoon and a tablespoon, all for a single recipe, especially one where dry and wet ingredients are being measured, a pain in the ass. So many little dishes that I may or may not need to rinse and dry between ingredients that call for the same measurement.

For the record I’m an American. I will sometimes ditch a recipe when I see it calls for volumetric measurements.

It really depends what sort of recipes you're making, but for cooking very loose approximations are often fine.

I often have to convert to weight/mass in order to find out how much of an ingredient to buy. I have no idea how many cups an eggplant is. But once I get it home the recipe might as well say "however much eggplant you have."

If I'm truly off, I will typically scale up the recipe adjusting for the extra meat or vegetable content. I'll more or less assume that 1lb of meat is interchangeable with 1lb of veggies. That's not quite true, in particular with salt.

Your mileage may vary though. Some recipes and ingredients are much more sensitive to deviations.

Because it's often easier to measure things by volume, and most cooking dishes do not need precise measurements. It sucks for baking dishes, but for anything that doesn't need to be precise I find it way more convenient to grab a volume measurement than a scale

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the truth is americans kind of just do things arbitrarily.

History.

Why do Brits use Stone for weight of people? Same answer.

Eh, it's what I grew up with...

3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon (14.787ml)
1 tablespoon = .5 ounces
8 ounces = 1 cup (236.588ml)
1 cup = .5 pints
1 pint = .5 quarts (473.176ml)
1 quart = .25 gallons

The weird thing is, above 20 ounces, sodas are sold in metric. 1L, 2L, 3L. So is alcohol, 750ml.

Milk and juice are sold in ounces, pints, quarts and gallons.

I switched to weighing everything a few years ago and I when I moved I didn't have to have a set of spoons, dry cups, wet cups. I just use the scale.

Most baking doesn't require the precision of weighing. They are rough proportions, not an exact science.

An experienced baker, or really any kind of chef, will learn over time to make minor adjustments based on a lot of stuff. Maybe a bit less sugar, to taste. Maybe a difference in the brand or exact type of ingredient compared to what you're used to. Maybe it's a particularly dry day and you need to add more moisture to the dough.

If it's something I have a lot of experience with I don't even bother with measuring at all, just eyeball it.

https://youtu.be/JYqfVE-fykk?si=yduDPjzkXI7G6rJH

This. Explains. It. All.

I always try to search either for metric recipes or "tech cards", cus trying to follow imperial recipes is a frigen nightmare. My cup is 300 milliliters, hell if I know what volume cups they use.

The units used in the kitchen make sense, firstly because cups, spoons and shit are common things found in the kitchen, secondly because precision is not really a priority and thirdly because coocking is about proportions.

I usually take a piss on the american pathetic unit system anyway

Because it's quick and the tools to measure volume are cheap and simple and for cooking for a few people in a home kitchen it works well enough.

As an American who was taught to use cups and had recipe books that used cups, I dunno but it's dumb. A cup of peanut butter?! Like no fucking way I'm scooping that shit into a cup then into whatever I'm making. But I did measure just like that before I knew better. I have a food scale and convert cups to a weight and I will never turn back.

Stubborn, i guess

Almost everything sold in USA is measured in metric and imperial units (technically wrong name, US customary units). You can get by with either.

Also, the measuring by volume can be bad for salts, because different types take up different volume amounts. A tale of two salts by Chef John (foodwishes channel on YouTube) has a nice little video about this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XGCY9Cpia_A

Measuring cups (special cup and fractional cup sized cups) are pretty convenient.

Although it's worth bearing in mind that a US cup is 240ml, an Imperial (British) cup is 284ml and a metric cup is 250ml.

No think, grab spoon/cup, dump.

Source: USAian.

Fun fact : in France we mesure by weight except for the "gâteau au yaourt". The yoghurt cake is the most basic cake with each family having it's own recipe, a bit like maybe muffins in other places and this cake is entierly mesured in volumes.

Cups is a volumetric measurement. Honestly I'd be fine with switching to liters for measurements, or deciliters or whatever makes sense. Gravimetric measurements never made intuitive sense to me.

I'm from the UK but we have a set of cups for old recipes (and American recipes)... Honestly it's easier in a lot of cases to measure stuff out, I like it. What's really annoying is that US and UK cups are DIFFERENT SIZES.

Silly question: are all cups the same volume? I didn’t bother to measure but the cup i use to scoop rice seems very different in size from the one I use for dog food…

Measuring by volume is fewer steps. You fill it up to the line, done. Much easier than guessing, checking the weight, adjusting etc.

I don't think Americans are the only ones who do it the easier way...

Measuring by weight is great for pros who want to work fast. Most people are not pros.

Adam ragusea has some good video explaining both why we use volume and why we don't use metric

I kinda feel like in the grand scheme, it doesn't really matter. Sure we could measure by weight, but outside of a few ingredients prone to density variation it gets us by, and really there's just no impetus to change. 🤷

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Some good answers here, thanks everyone, I've learnt some stuff today. 🙂

Because we adore being different and difficult just for the hell of it.

Unless you're baking cakes from scratch for fun or trying to make aesthetically perfect macarons, I just don't really see a reason to use a scale.

With cup measurements, it's scoop, level, dump. I hate having to fuss around with getting perfect measurements of ingredients; it's the second-most boring part of cooking.

I really subscribe to Adam Ragusea's methodology of "cooking by feel", and just so happens it aligns with how my own culture treats cooking as well.

Everything. "How far to the restaurant?" "18 cups or so"

'The music is too loud, turn it down a few cups!"

I do actually like weight better for measurements, have a scale and that IS easier, agreed. But most recipes don't need to be so exact, and not everyone has a scale so volume measurements work. I just use a regular spoon for teaspoon and have cup measures, a small coffee cup here is 8oz, we have some of those too.

Hehe, not to offend anyone but I think Americans just like crazy units that are either cumbersome, difficult to convert or in this case imprecise as most ingredients vary in density, depending on which flour you chose and how you put it into the cup.

My guess is unwillingness to improve anything and an inability to learn for a subset of people.

I mean weighing things used to be more difficult and required you to move these weights around and was more complicated than just taking a cup of something. But nowadays we have electronic kitchen scales for 10€. And they don't require you to have a set of cups, spoons and get everything messy with butter.

I think the whole baking is quite different and convenience products like pre-made and refrigerated cookie dough or self-raising flour are far more prevalent than where I live. But we also buy lots of pre-made pizza dough and cake mixes here so there is that.

What you don't got a cup

Because it’s a few dozen times faster? You can literally reach into a container and take out one cup and that’s it. Works for me ost liquids or grainy stuff. Not from US btw.

Because not everything can be measured in feet!

I like using my scale, but it's a cheap PoS and shuts off after 10 seconds of inactivity. I really need to upgrade to a better one.

I've always measured in ⅓ centiliter bottles. I call that unit a Trio.

I consume 4 trios of water a day.

We can't measure in feet or inches because it would be ambiguous about how wide to make it

I measure boobs in cups because I'm a savage.

Even as a Canadian and raised on the metric system, I prefer recipes in cups and spoons.

Tradition, and its dumb as hell since we have set the official definition of every "imperial measure" to metric we just keep using the silly ones.

I've been cooking a lot lately. I don't measure anything. I eyeball my most stuff anyway. If I understand the recipe, then I know how much is needed. It takes practice, but it's much easier than weighing or using measuring cups.

Do you really believe that the people who wrote the recipe measured everything to perfection while keeping score of the exact amounts and timing through trial and error? No, they didn't. They made something and then estimated roughly how much they used when writing the recipe afterwards.

Because measuring by weight is simply a waste of time. Full cup have exact measure dump. Simple.

Why would you ever add an extra step or two for no reason??

Just buy cup and spoon measures. It simplifies the whole process. You already own metric measures, so what's the difference.

Edit: What's all this then? Down votes? How is this not the most effective solution? Did it come off as condescending? That was not my intention.

If the issue is that you dont understand the cup and spoon measurements, then just buy a cheap set of measures.

You learn what a cup is. You dont have to translate american recipes every time you want to make something (which doesn't translate to nice round numbers anyway) which saves time and reduces stress and you can still use metric measures for anything else.

Cups are great, the real annoyances are pints, quarts and gallons. Really no reason to use any of those when you can just state it in cups. Then we threw in fluid ounces for that extra layer of confusion and conversion.