CY -- think Monkey Island, Inc
Sassh I don't know about the knife thing people carried knives to a large extent as part of their personal day to day equipment, especially boys and men. Even in slavery, slaves would need a knife for many farm tasks involving ropes and twine and slaughter of pigs and chickens, and to supplement their diet by hunting and fishing a knife was essential. On the westbound trails, people used knives for butchering game, etc. and people got their children used to dangerous implements like knives by letting them use them and suffering the consequences of disregard of safety. Cotton wool parenting wasn't a thing back then.
Wrt mixing cups many poorer homes wouldn't have had a scale in the kitchen up until the middle of the century in Ireland or Britain, or perhaps even in continental Europe. Many people wouldn't have had recipe books either. Many an ordinary home baker's repertoire would have consisted of a limited number of breads and cakes with recipes on notebook paper expressed in cups of this or that, spoons of this or that, pinches of whatever.
Not only would the average budget not stretch to fancy ingredients or recipe books or specialised equipment, people didn't know they were missing an entire world of French or German patisserie, and on top of that, the chief cook and bottle washer in many a household would not have had the time to devote to the sort of research and work involved in turning out new recipes frequently. I think only in better off households would there have been more ambitious baking, a wide variety of fancy pastries and cakes, and equipment (and sometimes the staff) to produce them.
One of my grandmothers used a chipped teacup in the sacks of flour and sugar to measure. She baked Christmas pud, Christmas cake, shortbread, seedcake, and coffee and walnut cake for special occasions apart from Christmas -- coffee and walnuts were very out of the ordinary ingredients. She also baked Irish brown bread, soda bread, scones, crepes for Shrove Tuesday, and griddle cakes. My other grandmother had recipe books, scales, money to spend on baking, and fond memories of time spent in Parisian and Bavarian cafes to inspire her.