Some measuring cups don't give you a scale, from which you can accurately measure volumes, they'll just have 1/4, 1/2 and 1 cup measurements. Theses are not standard, as the volume of 1 cup differes from country to country (a metric cup is 250ml, an American cup is 237ml).

Most cookbooks usually tell you at the beginning which they use, and if they don't you can usually figure which they mean by where the book was published.

Over here, butter usually comes in 500g blocks.

The image you posted says it weighs 4oz. 4oz is 113 grams, so one of our blocks is almost 4 1/2 of your sticks.

Common myth.
Your metabolic system is active anyway, even if you aren't eating anything at all.

No, but it doesn't mean that their calorie balance is negative either.

We accept patches.

No...A cup of pussy...

I took a look through my cook-books (I have American, British, New Zealand and Australian), and they were pretty much consistent.

Meat amounts were generally given in weight (except for specific portions such as 8 chicken drumsticks). Vegetables were given in weight, or by size (eg. 3 medium onions, 1 medium cauliflower, diced).

Liquids were always listed by volume, as were powdered ingredients (exceptions were salt and pepper which were assumed to be to taste). Butter in all of them was by volume (teaspoons and tablespoons).

The only way the American books differed was by sometimes specifying things such as 1 packet of artichoke hearts. This I find rather annoying as it's assumed the reader will know how big packets of things are (Does everything come in the same size in America?), and most of the ingredients specified this way are not available in packets here and must be bought fresh. All the American cook-books I have are from an 80's collection by Better Homes and Gardens, so it could be something specific to them.

Um, cups are a normal measurement, whether you knew it or not.

One of my pinches is more than double one of my girlfriend's pinches. I know this from the time I went on a rant about what a stupidly inaccurate measurement a pinch is when I was reading an online recipe that called for nearly all it's ingredients in pinches and handfuls (I can hold three times as much macaroni in my hand as she can).

I've been told by several people that my irritation with such unspecific measurements is because I'm half Dutch. I know it bugs my mother too, so perhaps there's some truth in that. Do any of our Dutch forum-goersget bothered by things like that?

I'm sure it's just as inaccurate. But in this day and age, when you can buy a set of platic measuring spoons for a few dollars, cook books have no reason to specify several pinches when they could use 1/4 teaspoon.

I can actually get it pretty much bang on. But then again, I did used to mix powders for a living.

I can also free-pour a 30 ml shot ten times in a row into a rocks glass and then tip that into a shot glass and have the shot glass filled exactly to the rim every time.

Personally, I would prefer recipes to use accurate measurements for all ingredients (OMGz, a computer could do it!), but cooking isn't usually held up to the standards of science.

I don't really care to cook so it doesn't bother me at all (the only things that I do "cook" require nothing more than heat and occasional stirring or flipping). I just hope that those that do cook for a living know enough about what they're doing to prepare my food properly.

Cool.

Actually, it's possible that this is the first time. I never said that science doesn't apply to cooking (obviously it does). I simply said that the average user cooking doesn't care about being precise (as a scientist would), the same with average persons in all fields (the source formatting of c0lleages drives me crazy ). Fortunately, cooking average food is relatively simple to do adequately enough to not kill people so we manage to get by anyway, but I wouldn't pay for most peoples' cooking.