[ace2358]

I’ve never understood cooking by volume and will reject any recipe that uses it. Especially for ingredients that don’t have a fixed density.

1 cup of flour? I can easily get double the amount in my cup depending on how I scoop it.

1 cup chopped mint leaves… wtf?

1 large potato… kill me! At the farmers market potato’s can come in very different shapes and sizes.

I’m confident enough of a cook to know how much mint and potato I want, but it’s impossible for flour.

My rule of thumb is if the packet describes it in grams, then why should the recipe use volume??

Converting between volume and weight is also senseless for anything other than water.

[jrockway]

I guess what you can take away from volume recipes is that the quantities aren't that critical. Usually your recipe will turn out quite delicious even if you get a small "large potato" or an oversized "large egg".

You're right though that you can definitely pack a measuring cup with flour and get more than you intended. Bread can be pretty persnickety too, which is why volume based recipes mention how to fill the measuring cup.

[whatshisface]

>I’ve never understood cooking by volume and will reject any recipe that uses it.

Here is the secret: recipes are not all that precise. There is no point getting a caliper out to measure the length of a cinnamon stick when the variation between individual people's tastes is already larger than the variation in the (admittedly humorous) "cup of chopped mint leaves." A recipe will come out fine for large variations in input ingredients, if that wasn't true do you think the standard measuring cup sizes would be 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 and 1?

[JustSomeNobody]

While it’s impossible to know how much the cup of flour weighed at the time the recipe was written, you can start by looking up how much the flour you are using weighs per cup and try that much with the recipe. Then if you feel it needed more flour, make a notation.

[mcphage]

> 1 large potato… kill me! At the farmers market potato’s can come in very different shapes and sizes.

Yeah—and what happens if you end up with a large potato the size of a small potato? Then you're completely hosed.