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Comment by dukeyukey | Hacker News Reader

> Cup is a universal measure of volume. It works for flour, sugar, liquids.

Until a recipe asks for 1-cup of butter. Tf am I meant to be, melt it down? Or 1-cup of broccoli, how does that even work?!

Grams works for everything. All the time, no exceptions.

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"cups of butter" is the wildest measurement I come across regularly in US recipes.

Just... how?

Edit: A friend of mine has just related running across a US scone recipe asking for "5 tablespoons of cold butter". I don't even want to think about packing cold butter onto a tablespoon to get that measurement right!

In case you are wondering how this works in practice, American butter typically comes in "sticks". Each stick weighs 1/4 pound, and is individually wrapped in foil or paper. These wrappers are typically marked in Tablespoon increments with 8 Tablespoons (1/2 cup) per stick. Measuring Tablespoons of butter just involves looking at the markings on the stick (or visually estimating the number of 8ths) and cutting off the chunk that one needs. Measuring major fractions of cups is just counting sticks.

That does provide a method to the madness, thanks.

But... butter being measured in "cups" and "tablespoons", which are multiples/fractions of a 1/4lb block, is therefore fundamentally a unit of weight, not volume?!?

That's even more wild.

Also, that will greatly simplify the conversion process for me in the future.

Previously, when I've come across a US recipe requiring cups of butter, I've looked up the size of a US cup - which is given in fl.oz - converted that to ml, and then found a good estimate for the density of butter, and used that to convert to a weight in grams - which I can then measure easily.

If I'd known that "a cup of butter" was not really meant to be an actual "cup" measurement, and was actually shorthand (longhand?) for "0.5lb butter", that would have made conversion So. Much. Easier.

Seriously, wtf.

(I take it that other "cup" measurements are actually meant to be volume measurements, and I should measure cups of flour/sugar/etc... (and liquids, obviously) in volume-marked measuring containers?)

Butter in the USA is sold in 1-pound boxes, each containing four quarter-pound "squares" that are marked with tablespoon and fractional-cup gauges. Simply slice off five tablespoons. (There are "Eastern" and "Western" square sizes, depending on where you live.) See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter#Packaging

Indeed, how would you slice cold butter by grams? Is there even a procedure?

Easy. Just slice of parts into your bowl until the scale shows the desired weight. I am a bit envious of American butter packaging, because it saves so much time, but if they ever change anything about it, you are all hosed, because nobody will know what 5 tablespoons was supposed to mean. ;-)

> how would you slice cold butter by grams?

It's more sensible than slicing off butter by spoons, where a spoon is not a square, except the slice of butter is a square!

Butter stick at least in America normally have tablespoon marks on the wrapper. That said, sometimes the wrapper is clearly shifted one direction or the other so that the first or last “tablespoon“ is not a full tablespoon.

Butter sticks in the US have marks down the side of the wrapper, like a ruler, that show you tablespoon increments. Google image search "tablespoons butter stick".

In the US, our butter comes in wrappers that divide each stick into 8 tablespoons, so it's actually very easy -- you can visually see where to cut.

When a recipe asks for a cup of butter, they're not actually asking for a cup of butter. American butter comes in one pound blocks so it's likely the recipe developer actually used a half pound of butter rather than a cup. If you actually measure a cup of butter into your recipe you've likely put slightly more butter in than the recipe developer did.

But at least you'll be close. Unlike 1 cup of broccoli.

How do you measure 1 cup of broccoli? Cos that sort of instruction comes up constantly. Unless American stores sell vegetables in 1 cup bushels (which just in case they do, is beyond insane) I don't see how you could reliably do that ever.

Yes, that's such an obvious point that I didn't think I needed to make it more clear that I agree with you.

Agreed I hate volume measurements for anything that can’t be packed down or that is expected to be used in a non-liquid form (like the butter example). At least with butter, I know it means two sticks but I still prefer weight whenever possible.

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