AIBU to not understand cups?

[Thisnamechanger]

This is probably the most minor, pedantic, first world problem AIBU I've ever posted but can anyone explain the American recipe measurements to me?

I do get that they have standard measuring cups (have seen them in shops but never bought them) and I totally understand that for things like milk, flour, rice etc. but how the feck does it work with things like spinach?? Surely the cup would be full with about 5 spinach leaves because they don't sit flat? Is it chopped? Shredded? Or is it cooked spinach? If so how on earth do you know how much raw spinach will produce a cup of cooked spinach?

Surely I can't be the only person that struggles with this or am I missing something really really obvious?

Can you tell I'm using myfitnesspal and I'm hangry

Ok so I thought this was about bra cups. Can I talk about whether it's weird that the first couple of times I got measured as a young adult was in a particular branch of m and s and the lady did it by 'sight and touch' no tape measure at all, thought it was a bit odd but she seemed accurate. Only when my housemate went there and came out gobsmacked, did I realise just how odd it was. Still, surprisingly accurate...

Do a cup of a flour and a cup of sugar weigh the same? Surely it’d be different because if the relative density of each?

It is a bizarre system!

Do a cup of a flour and a cup of sugar weigh the same?

No, they don’t need to, hence using the cups, not grams.

So what, you pack the cup full of butter? It doesn't make sense.

No, sadie, if you look carefully at the photo of the butter stick, the bottom lines on the pack indicate tablespoons. the top lines indicate cup measurements (1/4, 1/2, 1).

Much much easier.

It is not a bizarre system, just different.

I just lived for a year and a half in wales as a Canadian and didn’t realize you measured with scales! I bought a set of cups and measuring spoons and converted all recipes from grams to cups. It’s all I know how to do and it came out fine every time!

It's not just the US/Oz.

I used to live among a lot of Greek Cypriots, whose recipes used 'glasses' of this and that. And for cakes, IIRC they would often use oil, not butter.
It's very practical for dry ingredients, though the odd US recipe with 'half a 'cup of butter' did have me scratching my head. I've got a feeling they sell it in 'sticks' in the US, which are = to so much of a cup.

When the system originated, sets of scales (old fashioned ones with weights - my MiL still had one) - would presumably have been an expensive item and beyond the reach of many.

A cup is 8 fl oz. So butter is a wee bit less dense, so a cup is about 7 oz. Take 8oz pack (or 2 4oz sticks in the US) and cut a bit off.
I grew up with US cooking so once I crammed soft butter into a cup, and mum laughed and said just look at the cup and the butter and add butter to the same amount. Most recipes are pretty forgiving - only on Bake Off do people weigh eggs to ensure their sponge is perfect. Most Brits just weigh other ingredients per egg, so no more accurate than cups.

I tend to use the half cup for scooping out of packets, and then the cup is dry for pouring oil etc into.
I cook in US, Imperial and pure metric (a decilitre or 100 ml is the size of a plastic airline teacup, best advice given when we became expats in Scandinavia). I found myself using cups when cooking with toddlers so they could count one, two etc, then oz when a bit older for the same reason, and now they can use numbers in the 100s reliably, we use more metric.

Bothersome Crow thank goodness, at last someone has answered my and others' query about effing butter.

Butter in a cup - enough to drive you to drink.

We dont' have cup measurements written on our packs in the UK so it is a PITA.

I shall write that down now - cup of butter = 7oz. THANK YOU!!

It’s actually a cleverer way to cook as makes cooks use their brains to work out ratios etc and means you don’t need to waste your money buying scales etc. A cup of butter is just soft butter packed into a cup. Can be a measuring cup or any old bowl you have in the house - gran would make cakes that fed 50 people by using a saucepan for cake recipies for special occasions.

Do a cup of a flour and a cup of sugar weigh the same?

Even granulated sugar and caster sugar don't weigh the same. Or to be pedantic, they weigh the same but they pack differently into the cup, so a cup of caster sugar weighs more than a cup of granulated sugar. Not much difference but noticable.
Traditional oven here has a calculator for every conversion you could ever want, including converting cups, sticks and table/teaspoons of butter into grams or ounces.

If you're trying to log on MFP, try putting 'raw spinach asda' in, and you'll likely get the gram equivalent. Or Tesco, etc. Even if that not where you bought it, if it's fresh produce the cals will likely be very similar.

Is this all helping op? How's MFP this morning?

I'm okay with cups, normally use them for making up coconut milk from powder. But WTF is a stick of butter?

halfwitpicker

I'm hungover so had an all day breakfast roll, popcorn and a wispa for lunch. Needless to say I'll not be going on MFP today.

Stick of butter = American term for their packs of butter, equating to 4ozs, or around half the size of our butter blocks.

trovi Ah thank you that helps a lot