Why do Americans measure everything in cups?

Chris@feddit.uk to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 198 points –

Used a couple of US recipes recently and most of the ingredients are in cups, or spoons, not by weight. This is a nightmare to convert. Do Americans not own scales or something? What's the reason for measuring everything by volume?

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And one pint of water is one pound.

You've completely missed the point, which is that most of the world measures ingredients (like flour for instance, where one pint is not one pound) by weight and not by volume.

Measuring by weight has only been a thing for cooking since digital scales became cheap.

A pint of water is not one pound, its 1.04318, which is a significant difference.

In what widely-used context is a .04318 difference significant?

Not soup. Not bread.

I don't think even concrete would suffer noticeably from that difference.

Well that's a 4.3% difference. I'd consider 4.3% significant