Measuring solids by volume (mostly) doesn’t make sense.
This could be apocryphal, but I seem to recall hearing that a lot of American recipes got established during times of westward expansion, and that it made more sense for people moving out to the frontier to carry a measuring cup and a set of spoons that it did for them to carry a carefully-calibrated scale.
Yeah that makes sense. And in a pinch (no pun intended), measuring your solids by volume or even just eyeballing it is good enough for a lot of cooking (baking is a different matter).
But let’s not forget that Europe was not always metric, either. They went through the same process. They had the same units (or similar units) as US has now, with a lot of the same quirks. That was the entire point of the metric system: have one consistent set of units. United States was onboard early for metrication, but backed out before it completed it, so here we are.
This could be apocryphal, but I seem to recall hearing that a lot of American recipes got established during times of westward expansion, and that it made more sense for people moving out to the frontier to carry a measuring cup and a set of spoons that it did for them to carry a carefully-calibrated scale.
Yeah that makes sense. And in a pinch (no pun intended), measuring your solids by volume or even just eyeballing it is good enough for a lot of cooking (baking is a different matter).
But let’s not forget that Europe was not always metric, either. They went through the same process. They had the same units (or similar units) as US has now, with a lot of the same quirks. That was the entire point of the metric system: have one consistent set of units. United States was onboard early for metrication, but backed out before it completed it, so here we are.