I'm all for respecting cultural differences, but...

[EscargotChic]

I love the internet as a source of recipes, but when they give ingredients US-style it drives me nuts. I think the one currently in the oven will be fine with approximate amounts which is good because it called for a pint of cherry tomatoes and a quarter of a cup chopped onion.
Not wanting to disrespect lovely US Mumsnetters, but seriously, kitchen scales are an amazing invention!

I’d just like to say I bloody love metric. So logical. Simple. Universal. Brilliant.

None of this nonsense of different volumes for the units sharing the same name, esoteric terms, bizarre groupings :
lb means pound despite not using any letters of the word pound, 16 oz in a pound, 14 pounds to a stone, 20 or maybe 16 fluid ounces in a pint etc etc

I can work with and recipe notation but all hail lovely, water-based Metric. 💕

I do have cups, but am too cautious to use them as I’m sure I read somewhere that dry ingredient cup sizes are different than wet ingredient cup sizes!

I’ll stick to weighing until I have time enough on my hands to experiment with cup cooking, I think, but in the meantime, when searching for recipes, I always finish my search with a comma and UK - that normally brings the weighed recipes to the top😁

@Trishthedish A stick of butter is 4 oz, not 2. There are 4 quarter pound sticks in a pound of butter.

@Worralorra they are the same.

Cups are amazing for cooking. Quick, easy to clean etc, I have used cups for cooking for many years. You soon get used to 'packed' and 'unpacked'. They are less amazing for baking as things need to be much more precise and our other ingredients aren't 'Americanised' like our butter doesnt come in sticks and even when i match it, it doesnt always work (although i have a BRILL american recipe for oat raisin cookies that uses cups and works every time, syrup not butter and the kids love them) . You will be able to find an equivalent recipe that is UK orientated on line though, so just use UK ones.

That's 8 tablespoons or 1/2 a block - 125g.

Have to say, it doesn't overly bother me. I've been cooking for so long that it's become second nature to convert.

I know what a cup is equal to, I know how to convert oz to grams. And if it really annoys me, I print the recipe and weigh the ingredients and jot that down beside.

Plus, quite a few websites have an American to metric toggle anyway.

I bought American measuring cups from Amazon. You can also convert US measures to UK on the internet

(points to username) I’d say most Americans who aren’t dedicated, passionate cooks or bakers use measuring cups. I don’t even know where to buy a food scale, and I don’t know anyone who uses one.

I wouldn't mind the cups thing quite so much if there wasn't a difference in size between American and British Cups. I have an Ikea measuring glass with both marked on it and who knew they weren't the same? How am I supposed to know which a recipe is referring to? Maybe I should use it as a good excuse for my lousy cooking!

I know an increasing number of people who bake by weight. It’s getting much more popular since baking books have moved to it. It’s easy to buy scales on Amazon. I used to get them at Bed Bath & Beyond too before it closed, so I’m sure there’s lots of places.

Also, the foil the stick is wrapped in has markings so you can see how much to use.

I have three sets of cups, but then, I am Canadian.

The butter sticks make sense actually! They’re also called quarters. So.. you buy a lb of butter in 4 quarters. A 1 lb brick would be awkward, though you can get it. Once you’re used to it it’s very practical. I can pretty much measure tablespoons by eye now. For historical reasons the sticks are different shapes on the east and west coasts. East coast is long and skinny while west coast is fat and stubby.

American butter box:

US here. I bake and I use metric and you will pry my scales from my cold dead hands.

I do like sticks of butter though.

No, they are the same size. A cup is 8 fluid ounces. The same volume whether it's a liquid or a solid. You may have gotten confused because it's often recommended that you use measuring cups for solid ingredients (like flour) and measuring jugs for liquid ingredients (like milk), but they are the same volume.

I don't know anyone who would actually measure the volume of chopped onions for a recipe, but it is useful as a visual guide for the approximate amount you need, particularly when onions are so variable in size. So if a recipe calls for 1/4 cup finely diced onions I can picture how much that is.

Because a cup is a standard measurement (8 fl oz). It doesn't mean just grab any old coffee mug out of your cupboard.

A stick of butter in the US is a standard size. It is 8 tbsp of butter and butter is packaged in sticks, then usually 4 sticks are sold together in a container.

I do and I'm British. A set of cups and cake's made, without faffing about with scales.

To be fair, I do find coping with a stick of butter difficult. But, I am trying to cut down anyway.

Nope.
In my grannys (and now Mum's) old recipe books it was always pounds and ounces.

"God's couldn't be everywhere so "she" gave us Google. Look it up and you will get the table of transfering to the weights and measures of your country by simple asking Google for example what is "one cup in British oz/pints/mls or whatever it is you're using.

You're are thrown up more American weights in recipes because Google is an American company so unless you specify UK, or the country you live in, weights you want say for a recipe you will usually get American (as in anything) first

I’m with you especially with baking cups are not as accurate as a scales.I asked on a recipe page why they still used such antiquated ways and I was told “not everyone has a scales y’all”.. well why not you can buy one for less than a tenner !

I’m with you especially with baking cups are not as accurate as a scales.
That depends entirely on how precise the scales are. I have tested both scales that I have at home with a set of calibration weights from work and they were both out and both incorrect over the entire range of weight that I tested. Not enough to worry me but probably within the same range of error as using cups.

If cups are used correctly - you can look it up if you're interested, but there is a correct way to measure, for example, a cup of flour so that it's consistent - then it's close to as accurate as using scales. Close enough even for precise baking.