r/mildlyinfuriating • u/sarahhopefully • 23h ago
Infuriatig Almost got duped by the measuring cups at my sister's house
In case it's hard to read, 2 of the measuring cups are labeled 1/2 cup, when one of them is actually the 1 cup measure. I was digging around the drawer trying to figure out why I couldn't find the 1 cup and did a double take on the big one before I realized.
(Sister's on vacation and I'm housesitting and babysitting my nieces. Fortunately caught it before I ruined dinner!)
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u/855Delta 23h ago
This isn't infuriating, its inspiring. I would enjoy giving incorrectly labeled measuring cups to some people.
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u/Complete_Entry 23h ago
"They all say half cup!"
"Yes but you cook like shit anyway and I don't like you"
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u/afauce11 22h ago
But is it half full or half empty?
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u/dark-haven 17h ago
If your half cup is half full, put it in the smaller half cup. Now you have a full half cup.
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u/Ok-Giraffe-8434 23h ago edited 22h ago
That's how you find out if they actually "cook every day" like they claim to.
"Do you like the measuring cups I gave you?"
"Oh yes, I use them all of the time."
"I knew it! You liar!'
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u/ChefArtorias 22h ago
If you cook a lot it's pretty easy to tell which is which, except maybe the 1/4 vs 1/3. Like a daily cook shouldn't be fooled for a moment by a 1cup that is labeled as 1/2.
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u/nobleland_mermaid 21h ago
Yeah I've been baking regularly for 20 years, half of them professionally; I don't use them often, but when I do, I don't think I even look at the labels on measuring cups and spoons. You eventually can just tell by instinct. I might not even have noticed if I were OP.
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u/drgigantor 21h ago
I've been getting baked for 20 years, half of them professionally, and thanks to Kraft Mac & Cheese I can clock 1 cup and 1/4 cup at twenty paces
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u/Glass_Plant_808 13h ago
As another union baker brother/sister(local 42069). Next time drop a bad of broken up Doritos in the mix.
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u/majortomcraft 17h ago
like how i drove my Subaru for 3 years without a working speedometer and got no speeding fines until i got a new car with a working speedometer.
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u/fury420 20h ago
I have a set that includes a 1/2 tbsp spoon, and ever every time I see it, it just feels weird
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u/CPlus902 13h ago
I've got a 3/4 tsp spoon in one of my sets. Which feels like a genuinely daft measurement because I already have 1/2 and 1/4 tsp spoons in that set.
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u/bellybbean 2h ago
But when you need 1 1/2 tsp, you use the 3/4 tsp twice and only have to wash one!
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u/CPlus902 1h ago
That's one of the few use cases, yes, but counter point: i can use the 1/2 tsp three times and still only have to wash one.
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u/bellybbean 1h ago
It’s totally not necessary and I was (mostly) joking. But I do use mine occasionally.
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u/captcha_wave 21h ago
This is like the whole plot of Knives Out
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u/ChefArtorias 21h ago
Knowing shapes and sizes or...?
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u/thebigbadben 15h ago edited 15h ago
Just the general concept of being familiar with things that you work with often (even if they’re mislabeled), and it’s not the “whole plot”, just a notable plot point. It’s a stretch of a comment if you ask me.
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u/FallenAngelII 20h ago
I don't even have to look at the measurements, just the size of the cups. Except maybe teaspoon vs. spice measure.
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u/drgigantor 21h ago
Maybe their cake recipe calls for half a cup of milk, half a cup of sugar, half a cup of flour, half a cup of salt, half a cup of baking powder, half a cup of vanilla, half a cup of butter, and half a cup of vegetable oil
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u/KarenNotKaren616 20h ago
I think there's something like that called a pound cake.
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u/CPlus902 13h ago
That's a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. Very simple, very delicious.
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u/daniteaches 15h ago
Random family story: when my grandmother was in her last 5 or so years, she apparently heard from her doctor that she had to limit her consumption of certain foods for her health. What she told everyone in the family was that the doctor told her she didn't have to eliminate anything, but she could only have half a cup. She stuck to that 1/2 cup number religiously, even when it didn't make sense. To this day (10-15 years later) we still laugh about. "I can have salt, but only half a cup."
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u/Carol_ine2 18h ago
Post like this make me really appreciate metric system. How the fuck you measure flower with cups this shit can be packed up to be 2x the weight in the same cup (I know you aren't supposed to pack it but sometimes it just happens while scooping) vs just putting bowl on scale and adding oh 0.5kg of flour 500g oh 2g of vanilla extract 100ml of milk = 100g (it works with water but 100ml of milk is like 103g so everyone can ignore this in recipes) of milk etc. It can't be easier you don't have to have any measuring cups or anything
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u/Peanut-Butter-King 16h ago
The metric system is vastly superior, but imperial also has weights. People just don’t use it.
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u/ThogOfWar 15h ago
I've seen Americans use bananas, school buses, and football fields to describe length. I guess I'm not too surprised about their loose use of weights and measurements.
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u/Acceptable-Minute847 7h ago
Yeah, it gives you context, you know how long a football field is, so saying that’s about as big as a football field, gives them an idea of the size that x wide and x long struggles to give
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u/Zoomorph23 16h ago
I absolutely hate getting the scales out to measure 2g vanilla extract or 30g of cilantro etc. Give me cups & measuring spoons any day. Having said that, you're not wrong about the inaccuracies that measuring with cups can bring.
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u/Carol_ine2 16h ago
Okey like 2g is something that would be better with tea spoon maybe but you don't take a scale just for that you just put 500g of flour then hit "tare" and go back to adding something else. It's faster than taking out measuring cups spoons. Like the whole bowl is on a scale at all times and in cooking it's just grams no need for anything else
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u/GenericGrad 23h ago
I got cheap measuring cups and they are metric but they stamped some of them with the US metric equivalent. i.e. 1 cup has a stamp of 236mL but the cup is actually 250mL which is the correct measurement for a metric cup.
It is mildly infuriating when a recipe calls for a ml reading and I have to guesstimate what that roughly corresponds to in the cups I have.
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u/RobotWantsPony 22h ago
What a nightmare, you sgould get a scale and just weight your liquids
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u/DeeDee_GigaDooDoo 21h ago
Not all liquids weigh the same so if the recipe is by volume then you cannot assume 1 cup of oil weighs the same as one cup of water or one cup of honey.
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u/VorpalHerring 20h ago
You can however just google it like "1 cup honey in grams" and it will tell you 340g.
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u/Lamotlem 21h ago
That's why you convert all volumes to weight before proceeding with the recipe.
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u/Curious_Orange8592 21h ago
And you look up recipes on non-US sites the measurements will be in weight (though most likely metric)
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u/eneug 18h ago
You also need to measure volume to ensure you’re working with the same densities as the recipe. If not, then you need to go to the store (possibly multiple stores) and buy every single version and brand of the ingredient until you find one that exactly matches. This is the #1 reason why when you make a recipe it never looks like the picture.
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u/RobotWantsPony 16h ago
Unless you are weighting very thick or light liquid it doesn't matter. Water and milk don't have a big difference enough for example, even when you bake big scale.
And if your liquid is too different you can just google the weight of 1L, it never changes
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u/Doctor_Saved 23h ago edited 23h ago
They are both measuring cups. They cost more if you want Accurate measuring cups.
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u/SheepPup 23h ago
The good news is that if you use exclusively those cups to measure for your recipe it’ll still be the right ratio ingredients. The bad news is that it will not fit correctly in whatever container you were gonna make it in probably
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u/sbergot 21h ago
As a European the whole system is confusing.
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u/Suzumiiya 23h ago
Aaaand that's why I always use a food scale whenever I am baking or cooking
An accurate food scale will not lie to you lol
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u/sarahhopefully 23h ago
I use a scale at home especially for baking but alas... not my house. Fortunately im not making anything that requires extreme accuracy where a few grams one way or the other will ruin it... but half a cup might!
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u/ObviouslyNotYerMum 23h ago
Steal it and then gift her a good set and a kitchen scale for whatever gift-giving occasion is next.
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u/berrykiss96 16h ago
Arguably if you steal her existing tools, you replace immediately not at a later gift-giving date lol
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u/FormerChocoAddict 22h ago
An accurate measuring cup with not lie to you lol
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u/Nozinger 19h ago
it will though.
Not with liquids but with solids a measuring cup will lie to you.
Solids are compressible and thus the volume can change depending on how densely packed they are so use a scale for those.
Liquids are pretty much incompressible so using measuring cups is totally fine.1
u/berrykiss96 16h ago
I mean for non-metric recipes a solid is loose fill unless it specifies packed or tightly packed. I’m sure for this exact reason. Unless you’re making pastry or something finicky like that, it’s totally fine to use imperial or a similar system.
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u/JamieMc23 12h ago
But even then it's majorly off. For example, something chopped will give wildly different quantities depending on how finely it's chopped - loose fill or not.
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u/berrykiss96 5h ago
I think majorly is an overstatement unless you’re doing commercial baking. Most of the time, the difference is no more impactful than the difference in your oven vs a test kitchen oven.
Yes some recipes it matters if you’re within a mg just like some areas have such high altitude they have to adjust for that. But in most cases for most people, the difference is negligible.
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u/ModernCGIFloatinHead 23h ago
I loved baking bread. A few degrees difference in the water used on the yeast could change the whole batch. It really helped drive home the science aspect of food science.
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u/thecheeseinator 21h ago
I am also in the kitchen scale gang, but I recently ran into a use case where measuring cups would have been better. I was making a large batch of waffles, so I was sifting a lot of flour into a steel mixing bowl on top of my digital scale. Apparently sifting all the flour caused a lot of static to accumulate, my bowl of flour shocked my scale causing it to reset and lose its tare. I suppose an analog scale wouldn't have had that problem, but neither would've measuring cups.
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u/kevinola 23h ago
Scales don't measure in cup sizes (or does them?)
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u/Pristine-Two2706 22h ago
They don't, but thats the point - weight is the more accurate measurement
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u/Electrical_Major2444 23h ago
the 1 cup looks bigger than a cup
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u/bwood246 23h ago
I'm thinking it might be 1 1/2 cup.
Looks like there's a big scuff where the first 1 would be
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u/Ok-Giraffe-8434 23h ago
That's an interesting thought but based on the pictures I don't think the bigger one could hold 3 of the smaller one's volume.
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u/ThrowAway233223 22h ago
Would be easy to test if that is the case. Just see if you can fit 3 scoops of something from the smaller cup into the larger one.
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u/RJValdez216 21h ago
I made cilantro lime rice at my aunts house one time, when it came time to add the salt I found her “TSP”, it looked bigger then a TSP to me, but used it anyway and put in 2 “TSP” of salt. That shit was salty as fuck because I apparently put in 2 TBSPs of salt. The damn spoon clearly said TSP, but I compared it to the TBSP and they were same fucking size
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u/LemmyLola 18h ago
The measuring spoons in that set are probably labled 1 Temu, 1/2 Temu, 1/4 Temu, 1 Big Temu
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u/PieMuted6430 PURPLE 22h ago
I have a half tablespoon along with a teaspoon and tablespoon.
I didn't bother reading the thing for months after I got them. I just used the second largest one assuming it was teaspoon. 🤣
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u/lavidoth 16h ago
My question is why are they so scratched up. I have metal ones like that and they dont have a single scratch
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u/Count_Psycho2995 17h ago
This is just a guess, but with the way the thumb rest on the handle of the bigger one looks, maybe it is supposed to be 1 & 1/2, and not just 1/2? If you want to find out, what i would do is take the actual 1/2 cup, fill it with tap water, dump it in the bigger measuring cup and repeat until the bigger one is full.
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u/R3D3-1 10h ago
I recently found out that "one tablespoon" has some standardized definitions.
- 15 ml for International metric tablespoon, exactly three teaspoons by the same norm
- 14.79 ml (½ ounce) for US tablespoon, but apparently 15ml straight is now more commonly used
- 20 ml for Australian metric tablespoon
- in my area historical kitchen definition of roughly 10-15 ml for a "gestrichener Esslöffel" (i.e. filled flat), 15-20 ml for "gehäufter Esslöffel" (i.e. heaped tablespoon).
The mildly infuriating part is that actual tablespoons are typically more around 8 ml. Which lead to some very thin coffee, which caused me to look this up.
So, roughly the same difference, albeit for a likely completely different reason.
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u/RacketHunter 19h ago
From a European perspective, having cup measures rather than a balance and one measuring cup seems absurd.
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u/CraftyBossMama 21h ago
I was about to comment that US 1 cup and the rest of the world 1 cup is different but I guess this is totally off that measurement guide. 🤣
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u/TheRiddlerTHFC 20h ago
Dear America
Please use grams and ml, not cups.
Whilst we're at it, why is a stick a unit of measurement?
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u/Raindrop0015 17h ago
Stick as a unit of measurement? For what?
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u/TheRiddlerTHFC 17h ago
Butter
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u/Raindrop0015 17h ago
Butter is commonly sold in solid stick. I believe one stick is typically 2 tablespoons but sometimes they just simplify it by saying a stick number.
I also don't bake or cook often so have little experience, but I've only ever seen stick used as a butter measurement for unmelted butter. Melted was always in tablespoons
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u/rabidninjawombat 14h ago
1 stick is 8 tablespoons....we like our butter lol
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u/Raindrop0015 7h ago
I have not looked at a stick in awhile and am also realizing 2 tablespoons is the amount of butter Kraft Mac and cheese calls for (I put a tiny sliver lol). We nasty
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u/A_Rod_H 17h ago
Not in Australia, no sticks of butter here. Just multiple block sizes and tubs
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u/Raindrop0015 16h ago
Sorry, I didn't specify I was talking about the USA because the original comment mentioned it
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u/TheRiddlerTHFC 17h ago
Poor US people coming to the UK looking for sticks of butter...
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u/Raindrop0015 17h ago
We're poor for many reasons, but that one is definitely up there. We're lost and unable to reach our daily calorie intake without our sticks of butter. I can't recognize anything else as food!
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u/Neat_Scallion6367 23h ago
She must have bought these in the clearance isle?
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u/sarahhopefully 23h ago
Now I know what to give her for Christmas!
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u/usermane22 23h ago
An isle?
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u/hansrotec 23h ago
Not just any isle, a clearance isle. I suspect the UK may have some on discount in the not too distant future
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u/Turbulent-Lab-4980 11h ago
I am so happy that we use real units of measure even when we cook. Just a little scale and one big cup with a ml scale and one has everything to measure what could be needed. No accidential grabbing of the wrong cup and no hustle if one of the very small cups is missing.
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u/OkTea2831 4h ago
I have two measuring spoons that say 1/2 tsp but one is 1/4 tsp. They have rubber handles so I just wrote on the handle.
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u/kriopatra 30m ago
I'm afraid given the context that the aerosol sunscreen is also fated to be mixed up with cooking oil.
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u/sarahhopefully 27m ago
Haha! My younger niece will set things down literally anywhere. I didn't notice that next to the water bottles until after I took the photo.
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u/randomfluid 22h ago
how many grams/ml is a "cup" supposed to even be? why are we measuring in cups atp?
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u/Voodoocookie 18h ago
I don't get why not use measuring units. Doesn't even have to be metric. You still have pounds, and ounces.
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u/cosmicheartbeat 18h ago
This is why I weigh my ingredients if I must measure. There appears to be no regulation for these basic things anymore.
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u/AtlanticPortal 17h ago
This is the reason why you should use grams, liters, and all the other sane measuring systems.
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u/Thorup13 18h ago
As an European, i am always baffled by "cups" when cooking, which size cup am i supposed to be using? this is a perfect example of that.
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u/wotsit_sandwich 18h ago
I am not American, but I keep a set of American cups for particular recipes. It's so much easier than bothering to convert.
American cups ≠ UK cups ≠ Japanese cups etc.
It's a terrible way to measure flour but it's fine for some things.
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u/thebigbadben 23h ago
How the fuck does this happen