Measuring Cups

That do (and don't) measure up

If I had a nickel…or cinq centimes for everyone who’s asked me over the years, “Why don’t Americans use the metric system?” I’d be able to hire a team to do all the metric conversions for me in my recipes, or the conversions to cups and tablespoons. Frankly, I’d be fine with either, as long as we’re all on the same page, which definitely includes the pages of cookbooks.

It seems to be a golden rule these days that you’ll come across a measurement conversion that’s either wrong or weird. The weird ones are when a cookbook is converted to cups/tablespoons, and you see things like “5/8 teaspoon heavy cream,” which I once saw in a French>U.S. cookbook. Then there are the cookbooks that don’t work the other way, which call for “121 milliliters of milk.”

1 milliliter = .202 teaspoons of milk, and I’ve yet to bake something where a few drops of milk would radically change things.

I don’t know about you, but baking with a scale isn’t really fun. There’s no word for “home baker” in French, and while people do bake at home for pleasure, it’s not enough of a thing for someone to come up with a term for people who enjoy doing it, as we did in English. But considering there are words in French for everything from flâneur, describing someone who likes to go for a stroll, to having a bouffée delirante, a psychotic disorder that Wikipedia describes as “uniquely French,” maybe it’s time someone did.

I’d do it, but I’m too busy converting recipes, which, when you write a cookbook with a hundred recipes, each averaging eight to ten ingredients, is about a thousand conversions to get right.

Although I’m used to it, I have to say that I’m not ready to give up my measuring cups. (Unless, of course, the U.S. goes metric. Then we’ll talk.) But baking with cups and tablespoons is more viscerally fun. With a scale, you switch on a machine, place a bowl on it, spoon flour into it, and wait for the right numbers to show up on the screen. Then you zero it out and do it again with the next ingredient. While one could argue that it’s more efficient, and uses fewer dishes, if you’ve ever been weighing out ingredients like that and suddenly your scale turns off, it’s a moment of panic for a baker, prompting me to have a psychotic disorder, which could also use a name.

When I use a measuring cup, I open the bin of flour and dig my spoon into it to stir it up, the wheaty goodness of the flour rising to meet my nose. I like to swipe the excess flour off the top of a measuring cup with the edge of a knife, further making me feel like I’m participating in the process of baking. It allows me to appreciate the smell of the flour and its texture, which reminds me of opening my mom’s flour tin, with colorful flowers printed around it, and her digging into it. And I knew that something sweet and delicious would be coming out of the oven shortly.

If you’re not convinced, consider the difference between melting butter in the microwave versus on the stovetop. One could argue that it works better, and more efficiently, in the microwave, but I’d miss the sizzle and smell of melting butter, and watching it melt, too. Same with chocolate.

America was all set and ready to go, to convert to metrics in the ‘70s, which never happened for a variety of reasons. While every product in American supermarkets is nowadays listed in metrics (as well as ounces), the metric system was never adopted.

I could go on and on about it, and some people do on discussion boards. And somehow, some even think that I can do something about it, so let me be clear: If there were policies that I could change in America, going metric might be one of them. But there are a few other things that I’d tackle first.

Going metric, however, is in my Top Ten Things I’d Change because when you’re a recipe developer and you’re working on a recipe and you find the frosting for a cake is too much, and you want to reduce it by a third, you need to figure out what one-third of 5 ounces (~140 grams) of chocolate is. 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

But 140 grams? Reduced by a third is 95 grams, which doesn’t make my brain hurt as much as that video does. And if you’re trying to reduce 1 cup (140 grams) of flour for a cake recipe by 10%, you’re talking 125 grams. When you figure out what 10% of the cup is…you’re hired!

Another reason to go metric (and this time, again, it’s personal), recipe writers wouldn’t have people challenging our metric conversions for 1 cup of flour, which runs the gamut in cookbooks and online, from 120 grams to 142 grams. I had to stop answering messages on the subject because I wanted those hours of my life back that I spent responding. I used to reply with a video of me measuring and weighing flour. But — well, those pesky hours of my life kept creeping up.

As you can see from above, my measuring cups have been getting such a workout that the numbers on some have faded beyond recognition. People (outside of the U.S.) make fun of measuring cups, but they have them in France, called doseurs or verres à measure.

They’re often marked by ingredient — semoule (semolina), farine (flour), sucre (sugar), riz (rice), and tapioca, the last of which is interesting because I’ve never seen anyone use tapioca here in a recipe, and I don’t know any French dishes that use it. So I did a quick online search and found a bunch of them here, but anyone faulting American measuring cups for not being an exact way to bake, I think I spot markers for flour on that glass, which is also in German. (On a related note, I’ve come across recipes in France that call for a “wine glass” of milk or a “coffee spoon” of baking powder, which aren’t exactly precise…I’m just saying…)

When I worked at Chez Panisse back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, we baked mostly with measuring cups. A friend who is a culinary instructor in New York came to visit and was apoplectic when he saw us using them. But anyone who’s worked at a restaurant in America likely knows these…

I bought the one above at another American invention, a sidewalk sale. It’s illegal to do that in France without governmental authorization (and lots of paperwork), and Romain was stunned, and delighted, to discover people selling stuff on the sidewalk in front of their apartments in the U.S. Someone in my neighborhood in Paris was trying to organize one, and I was going to participate, but I made it through two of the six pages of paperwork and decided that I didn’t have time to find my mother’s birth certificate and proof that I was an author, which I once actually had to prove at an official meeting, and when I came back carrying eight of my books, with my name on the cover, I was told, “That’s not enough proof.”

These measuring cups made it all the way to Paris with me. When the one in the back got chipped, I was bereft, but it still works.

I also brought the measuring cups above to Paris with me when I moved here. We used the same ones at Chez Panisse, which were there when I arrived, circa 1983. I remember finding one at a thrift store in San Francisco and was overjoyed, and eventually, I found another. (I recently saw one on Etsy listed for $25 with a comment that it was a “rare find.” ) Lindsey Shere, the executive pastry chef, had a thrifty streak (which I inherited), and she may have brought them in from her home kitchen when the restaurant started in 1971 as she was tasked with making desserts. Back then, a three-course meal cost $3.95 and things were a bit humbler.

Or maybe they were a gift? Back in those days, when you opened a bank account, or brought a friend to open one, or even made a deposit, they’d give you a toaster oven, a percolator, garden tools, or a tennis racket.

Duz used to put a drinking glass in each box of detergent as a gift — a gift I’m sure some lawyers would have a field day with nowadays. It seems unimaginable today, although I couldn’t have imagined that eating laundry detergent would become a trend. So what do I know?

But some of the best bakers in America used measuring cups: Flo Braker, Marion Cunningham, Edna Lewis, Nick Malgieri, and Alice Medrich, no matter where they got them.

So when I was in the U.S. a few months ago, I replaced my faded measuring cup with a new one, a sparkling clean Pyrex measuring cup.

Pyrex is pronounced in French as if it rhymed with T-Rex, which I read online was originally a French brand. Yes, in the land of metrics, a company of measuring cups may have blossomed. But that’s not the case, as is the case for not believing everything you read on the internet.

Pyrex was developed by Corning Glass, in Corning, New York, and was launched in 1915. Its name was a mashup of “pie” and “Nonex,” the latter of which was based on a line of borosilicate glass (which could withstand extreme temperatures) that the company used for making lanterns and batteries. When the wife of one of their scientists, Bessie Littleton, asked her husband to bring some Nonex home with him so she could try baking in it, she found it worked well, and eventually the company started making measuring cups.

While the rest of the world hates (or says they hate, even though they have them, too) measuring cups, I love them and am not ashamed to say so. I have a slew of Oxo measuring cups, and, like everything Oxo makes, these measuring cups measure up.

But they do have a minor problem, which is when you’re measuring cream and thicker things in them, such as honey and oil, stuff tends to cling to the ridges inside. However, on my list of problems, that one is pretty far down there. I also like them because they’re lightweight, stack well, and have all the different measurements on them, from cups to milliliters. Plus, they’re easy to read.

But I started missing the visceral feel of glass, and it was a joy to unpack my new pyrex measuring cup when I got home from the States.

Yet, being the internet, people spread the news about the new pyrex (in small case) measuring cups, which are no longer being made of borosilicate glass. Instead, they’re made of tempered soda-lime glass, which is said to be more durable, but more likely to explode when taken from the refrigerator or freezer and put directly in the oven. Several people warned me about that happening, but I’ve been baking for more years than I want to admit and will admit to never taking a measuring cup full of something out of the freezer and putting it directly in the oven.

PRYEX in France, on the right, pyrex in the U.S., on the left.

And there hasn’t been room in my freezer for anything as large as a casserole since 2011, when it was brand new, so that hasn’t been a concern. But when I saw PYREX (in all caps) for sale on a flash shopping site in France, I grabbed a bunch of them, since they were priced from 4-6 euros each, which was about half of the price of their American counterparts. And yes, these are made in France.

When they arrived, I excitedly unpacked them, relegating my other measuring cups to the storage shed. But, like a number of conflicting things in France, the flier that accompanied them said they are not for use in a microwave or conventional oven. However, the sticker on each measuring cup seems to say otherwise.

I’m pretty sure that little symbol on the right is a microwave oven.

After I spent the afternoon soaking and scrubbing all those stubborn labels off, I was ready to rejoin my friends in the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar, who are the last holdouts in the world of not using the metric system, and started baking with them.

I was feeling all high and mighty about myself, especially for being a do-gooder and switching from plastic to glass (even though that old plastic isn’t going anywhere — it’s already a done deal), and hauled out my flour bin, bottle of milk, and container of sugar to begin baking something with my shiny new measuring cups.

But when I went to measure out 3/4 cup of milk into one, I looked and noticed that they don’t have cup measures. None of them. Say what? They have liters, milliliters, pints, and yes, even friggin’ ounces, but not a cup in sight. What kind of sick joke was that?

Especially to someone who writes recipes in two different systems of measurement? I thought we should be thanked for our service, not scorned.

Approx. Capacities? What the____?

And to make matters worse, each cup had a printed warning that the cups may not be accurate either. When your sole job is to be accurate, and you can’t promise that, you’d better rethink your place in the world, and in my kitchen, monsieur PYREX. (The one in all caps.)

I can’t change the measuring system in America, and doubt I have any clout in Liberia and Myanmar. But I’m thinking about changing back to my old measuring cups, and yes, my trusty scale, which has only let me down back in the days when no stores in France were open on Sundays and I would be in the middle of a baking project and the batteries would die. Fun times.

One could keep spares on hand, but I’ve got my hands full with scraping labels, answering questions about why America never switched to metrics, explaining that a 1/2 teaspoon difference in flour really isn’t going to be noticeable in a cake recipe, wishing that my bank would give me something like an electric carving knife or a trowel when I come in, rather than a grimace that I’m interrupting their day. But I shouldn’t be too hard on them since, if you read my book The Sweet Life in Paris, you know that because I was a cookbook author, they let me open an account there, which allowed me to stay in France.

So here I am now, with a few dozen measuring cups, and three scales to boot, along with a sizable back-up supply of batteries. And I’ve also got wine glasses and coffee spoons, too, so I’m ready to bake any and all recipes, no matter where your loyalties lie.