Cup measurements, oh how I despise thee

Cup measurements drive me utterly batty.

• 1 cup flour = 128g
• 1 cup white sugar = 201g

Who the hell knows what a cup of mushrooms weighs – surely it depends on the type of mushroom and how you cram them into the cup.

Then in different countries you’ve got different ‘standard cups’:

• U.S.: one cup (8 fluid ounces) = 237 milliliters
• U.K.: one cup = 227 milliliters, or .96 U.S. cups
• Australia: one cup = 250 milliliters

I know what people are going to say – it’s all relative man, so it doesn’t matter – as long as you use the same cup for everything.

It’s not. I’ve got a recipe that within all those cup measurements also includes things like 1/2 can of coconut milk – that’s going to be a fixed ml volume (sensible).

Grams and millilitres make sense. Cups, fluid ounces, ounces, yards, inches, feet, furlongs etc are done with. Give me logical metric any day.

And I know, cooking is not absolute – in fact I’m someone that rarely does anything with scales in a kitchen – but it’s the visualisation. I know what 200 grams of mushrooms are and I know how much I need to buy in a shop. 3 1/2 cups means nothing to me.