Unit 11 · Measuring and Reading a Recipe

Open the drawer and you will find two kinds of measuring cup. The first is a set of dry measuring cups: four or five metal or plastic cups that nest inside each other, usually 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 and 1 cup. Each one holds exactly its amount when it is filled to the rim and leveled. The second is a liquid measuring cup: one clear cup, glass or plastic, with a handle, a pouring spout, and lines up the side. Its top line sits below the rim so you can carry it without spilling.

The two are not interchangeable, and the reason is the rim. Flour, sugar and oats need a flat rim so you can sweep off the extra. Try that with a liquid cup and the cup is not full at the 1-cup line; you cannot level anything against a line printed on the side. Milk, water and oil need the space above the line and a clear side so you can see exactly where the surface sits. Pour milk into a dry cup to the brim and you will slosh some out on the way to the bowl. You will also read it wrong, because you cannot see the level from the side.

So the rule is simple. Dry ingredient, dry cup, level with a straight edge. Liquid ingredient, liquid cup, read the line at eye level. Set the liquid cup on the counter, bend down so your eye is level with the line, and pour until the surface touches it. Do not hold the cup up in the air; a tilted cup reads high on one side and low on the other. A cup is a cup either way, 8 fluid ounces. The tools differ because of how you fill them, not how much they hold.

A set of measuring spoons usually has four: 1/4 teaspoon, 1/2 teaspoon, 1 teaspoon and 1 tablespoon. Some sets add 1/8 teaspoon or 1/2 tablespoon. They are made to hold an exact amount, level, and they are sized to fit into a spice jar. A soup spoon or a teaspoon from the silverware drawer is not a measure. Silverware spoons vary from set to set, and none of them is made to a standard size.

For dry things like salt, baking soda or cinnamon, dip the spoon into the jar so it mounds over, then level it with the flat of a knife or the straight edge of the jar lid. For liquids like vanilla, hold the spoon flat and pour until it is full to the brim, not rounded up in a dome. Pour over a small bowl or the counter, never over the mixing bowl. If your hand slips, a tablespoon of vanilla lands in the sink, not in the cake.

The abbreviations matter. Recipes write teaspoon as tsp or t, and tablespoon as Tbsp, tbsp or T. The capital T is the big one. Read the card twice, because 1 T of salt in a soup is three times 1 t, and the soup will be salty enough to notice. When a recipe says a pinch or a dash, it means less than 1/8 teaspoon, the amount you can hold between two fingers. That is a real amount, but it is meant for things where a little more or less does not matter much.

Flour is the ingredient that most often goes wrong. It settles in the bag, and when you push a cup into it and scoop, you press it down and pack in more. A packed cup of flour can hold about a fifth more than a cup that was filled loosely. In a batch of muffins, that extra flour makes them dry, heavy and tall with a cracked top. Cookies come out puffy instead of chewy. The recipe was right; the measuring was off.

Here is the method. Stir the flour in its bag or canister with a spoon to loosen it. Hold the dry cup over the bag or over a sheet of wax paper. Spoon flour into the cup a spoonful at a time, without pressing, until it mounds above the rim. Now take a butter knife, a bench scraper or any straight edge, and sweep it across the rim in one pass. The extra falls back into the bag. What is left is a level cup. Do not tap the cup on the counter and do not shake it; both settle the flour and undo your work.

The same method works for granulated sugar, cocoa, oats, cornmeal and powdered sugar. Powdered sugar and cocoa clump, so if the recipe says sifted, sift first, then spoon and level. Recipes written before about 1900 sometimes said a heaping cup or a rounded spoon. Modern American recipes mean level unless they say otherwise. When in doubt, level. That one habit will fix more baking problems than any other single thing you learn this year.

Pour water into a glass measuring cup and look closely at the surface from the side. It is not flat. The edges climb the glass a little and the middle dips. That curve is called the meniscus. The rule is to read the bottom of the curve, the lowest point in the middle, against the line. Milk and oil do the same thing, though it is harder to see in milk. Read the bottom of the curve every time and you will be consistent.

Set the cup on the counter or table. Do not hold it. Bend your knees or lean down until your eye is exactly level with the line you want. Looking down from above makes the liquid seem to reach a higher line than it does; looking up from below does the opposite. Pour slowly as you get close, and stop when the bottom of the curve touches the line. If you overshoot, pour a little back into the container, not down the drain.

Some plastic liquid cups now have the lines printed on a slanted inside surface so you can read them from above. Those are fine; read them the way the maker intends. For a recipe that lists a liquid in tablespoons, such as 2 Tbsp of lemon juice, use the measuring spoon, not the cup. The smallest line on most liquid cups is 1/4 cup, which is 4 tablespoons, and anything under that is easier and more exact with a spoon.

Tape this to the inside of a cabinet door: 3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon; 4 tablespoons = 1/4 cup; 16 tablespoons = 1 cup. Everything about small measures comes from those three lines. If 4 Tbsp is 1/4 cup, then 8 Tbsp is 1/2 cup, 12 Tbsp is 3/4 cup and 16 Tbsp is a full cup. Jaylen’s brownie card, with its 8 tablespoons of butter and 16 of sugar, was really 1/2 cup and 1 cup.

You use these equivalents in two directions. Going up: a recipe says 6 tsp of chili powder and your teaspoon measure is in the dishwasher. Six teaspoons is 2 tablespoons, so use the tablespoon twice. Going down: a recipe says 1/4 cup of soy sauce but your liquid cup is dirty. A quarter cup is 4 tablespoons, so use the tablespoon four times. The amount is the same either way; only the tool changed.

Some in-between numbers show up often. One third of a cup is 5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon, because 16 divided by 3 is 5 and a third, and a third of a tablespoon is a teaspoon. Half a tablespoon is 1 1/2 teaspoons. Work these out on paper the first few times. After a month in the kitchen you will just know them, the same way you know that four quarters make a dollar.

The big measures stack up in twos and fours. 2 cups = 1 pint. 2 pints = 1 quart, so a quart is 4 cups. 4 quarts = 1 gallon, so a gallon is 16 cups. Look at the milk in the refrigerator: the small carton is a pint, the tall one is a quart, the jug is a gallon. Pick up the quart and picture four cups of milk inside it. That picture is worth more than the chart.

A cup also has a weight-sounding name: 8 fluid ounces. A fluid ounce is a measure of volume, of space, not of weight. It is the space that one eighth of a cup takes up. So a pint is 16 fl oz, a quart is 32 fl oz, and a gallon is 128 fl oz. A 12 fl oz can of soda is a cup and a half. A 2-liter bottle is a little more than 2 quarts, about 8 1/2 cups.

Soup and stock recipes are where this comes up. A recipe says 6 cups of broth and the carton in your hand says 32 fl oz. That carton is a quart, which is 4 cups, so you need a carton and a half. A pot labeled 8 quarts holds 2 gallons, or 32 cups. When you scale a recipe up for a crowd, you will need these numbers to know whether your pot is big enough before the soup is halfway made and rising toward the rim.

Put a cup of flour and a cup of sugar on a kitchen scale, one at a time. They take up the same space, one cup, but the sugar is heavier. That is the difference between volume and weight. Cups and spoons measure volume, the space something fills. A kitchen scale measures weight. The confusing part is the word ounce, which is used for both. A fluid ounce is volume; an ounce on a scale is weight. Sixteen ounces of weight make a pound. Only for water do the two roughly match: a cup of water weighs about 8 ounces.

A digital kitchen scale is easy to use. Set the empty bowl on it. Press the button marked tare or zero, which sets the display to zero with the bowl on it. Add flour until the display shows the weight you want. Press tare again and add the next ingredient into the same bowl. No cups to wash, and no packing problem, because a scale does not care how tightly the flour is settled. Professional bakers weigh almost everything for that reason.

Recipes that give weights usually give grams, because grams are small and there is no fraction to fuss with. A cup of all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled, weighs about 4 1/4 ounces, roughly 120 grams. If your recipe lists both, trust the weight. If it lists only cups, spoon and level and you will be close enough. A scale is also the honest tool for meat: a recipe for 1 lb of ground beef means 16 oz by weight, and the package label tells you exactly what you bought.

A stick of butter is the easiest fat to measure because the wrapper does the work. One stick is 1/2 cup, 8 tablespoons, 4 ounces. The wrapper is marked in tablespoons, so for 3 Tbsp you cut through the wrapper at the third line with a table knife. Two sticks are 1 cup. Half a stick is 1/4 cup. Keep the butter cold when you cut it; a soft stick smears and the lines stretch.

Shortening, lard and coconut oil come in tubs with no lines, so you use a dry measuring cup. Scrape the fat into the cup with a rubber spatula, pressing it into the corners so there are no air pockets, then level the top with the flat edge of the spatula or a knife. Air pockets are the mistake here. A half cup of shortening with a hollow inside might be only a third of a cup, and the pie crust will be tough and dry because it was short on fat.

There is a second method for solid fats called water displacement. To measure 1/2 cup of shortening, fill a liquid measuring cup with 1/2 cup of cold water. Add shortening, pushing it under the water, until the water rises to the 1-cup line. Pour off the water and the fat left in the cup is exactly 1/2 cup, with no air pockets possible. It works because the fat pushed aside exactly its own volume of water. Dry the fat with a paper towel if the recipe is a crust, where extra water matters.

Brown sugar is the exception to every flour rule. Brown sugar is sugar coated with molasses, and it is full of air unless you press it. Recipes mean packed brown sugar unless they say otherwise. Press it into the dry cup with the back of a spoon until it is firm, then level it. When you turn the cup over into the bowl, it should hold the cup’s shape for a second, like a sand castle, before it crumbles. A loosely filled cup of brown sugar can be a third short, and cookies come out pale and flat.

Honey, molasses, corn syrup and peanut butter are sticky, and half of what you measure stays in the cup if you let it. Before you fill the cup, wipe the inside with a little oil or coat it with cooking spray. Then the honey slides out in one piece. If the recipe also calls for oil, measure the oil first in the same cup, and the honey will follow it out. For a spoon, do the same, or run the spoon under hot water for a moment first.

Peanut butter and thick yogurt need a rubber spatula to fill the cup without air pockets, then a level, then a scrape to get it all out. Scrape the cup, not just the spoon. Recipes are written on the idea that the whole amount reaches the bowl. Leaving a tablespoon of peanut butter behind in a 1/2 cup measure is an eighth of it gone, and the cookies will taste a little less like peanuts and spread a little more.

When a recipe fails, work backward through three questions. Wrong tool? Milk in a dry cup, flour in a liquid cup, a silverware spoon standing in for a measuring spoon. Wrong fill? Flour scooped and packed, brown sugar left loose, shortening with air pockets, a heaping teaspoon of baking soda. Wrong reading? A liquid cup held in the air, a capital T read as a small t, 1/3 read as 1/2 on a faded card. Almost every measuring mistake is one of those three.

Each mistake leaves a clue in the food. Too much flour: dry, heavy, cracked tops, cookies that do not spread. Too little fat or sugar: tough, pale, flat flavor. Too much leavening from a heaping spoon of baking soda: a soapy, metallic taste and a cake that rises fast and then falls. Too much salt: obvious in a bite. Too much liquid: batter that runs, muffins that stick, bread that will not hold its shape. Learn the clues and you can name the mistake without seeing it happen.

Prevention is mostly habit. Read the recipe all the way through before you touch an ingredient. Set out every measuring tool you will need. Measure dry over the bag and liquid on the counter. Level every dry cup and spoon. Say each amount out loud as you measure it, especially tsp against Tbsp. Put a check mark by each ingredient on the card as it goes in, so you never add the salt twice or the baking powder never at all. Slow at the start is fast at the end.

Lay a recipe on the counter and find its parts. The title tells you what it makes. The yield tells you how much: serves 8, makes 24 cookies, one 9-inch pie. The times tell you prep time, cook time and total time. The ingredient list names each item, its amount, and often how it is prepared: 1 onion, diced; 2 Tbsp butter, melted. The method is the numbered steps. Some recipes also list equipment and an oven temperature at the top.

The order of the ingredient list is not random. A well-written recipe lists ingredients in the order you use them, so the list is also a checklist. If butter is first and eggs are second, the first step will almost certainly cream the butter and then beat in the eggs. Read the list against the steps once, and you will catch a missing ingredient or a step that never uses something you set out.

The words after the comma matter as much as the amount. 1 cup walnuts, chopped means measure a cup of whole walnuts and then chop them. 1 cup chopped walnuts means chop first and then measure a cup. Those are different amounts of walnuts. The same goes for 1 cup flour, sifted against 1 cup sifted flour. Read the comma as an instruction about when to do the prep, and you will measure what the writer meant.

The most common recipe disaster is not a bad measurement. It is step 6 saying chill the dough for 2 hours when dinner is in 45 minutes. Read the whole recipe before you do anything. The first pass is for the picture: what is this food, what does it look like at the end, and roughly how does it get there? The second pass is for the details: every number, every tool, every place the recipe makes you wait.

On the second pass, hunt for hidden time. Softened butter means it has been out of the refrigerator for a while. Marinate overnight, let rise until doubled, cool completely before frosting: each of these is a clock you cannot skip. Hunt for hidden tools: a 9-by-13 pan, a wire rack, a thermometer, a blender. Hunt for hidden ingredients in the steps that are not in the list, like the water for boiling pasta or the oil for the pan.

Then check what you have. Open the refrigerator and the cabinet and touch each ingredient. Two eggs on the card means two eggs in the carton. If something is missing, now is the time to decide: substitute, borrow, or pick a different recipe. Carpenters say measure twice, cut once. In a kitchen it is read twice, cook once. The five minutes you spend reading will save you the twenty you would spend fixing.

A recipe says cream the butter and sugar, and a student stirs them together for ten seconds with a spoon. The cookies come out flat and dense. To cream means to beat softened butter and sugar together with a mixer or a strong arm until the mix turns pale and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. The sugar crystals cut tiny air pockets into the fat, and those pockets are what make cookies and cakes light. Ten seconds with a spoon does not make any pockets.

Beat means to mix hard and fast, with a spoon, whisk or mixer, until smooth. Whisk means to beat with a wire whisk, which adds air; you whisk eggs, and you whisk dry ingredients together to blend them. Stir is gentler: a spoon moving in circles until the ingredients are combined and no more. Stir in the chocolate chips means just until they are spread through the dough.

Fold is the gentlest of all. You fold when one ingredient is full of air, like beaten egg whites or whipped cream, and the recipe does not want that air knocked out. Use a rubber spatula. Cut down through the middle of the bowl, sweep along the bottom, and bring the batter up and over the top. Turn the bowl a quarter turn and repeat. Stop as soon as the streaks disappear. Stirring or beating at this step deflates the mix, and a soufflé or an angel food cake will come out low and heavy.

Put a pot of water on the stove and watch it. First a few small bubbles form on the bottom and rise slowly, and the surface barely moves. That is a simmer. Next the bubbles come faster and break the surface all over, and the water rolls. That is a boil. Water boils at 212 °F at sea level, and no amount of extra heat makes it hotter; it just boils harder. Soups, beans and sauces usually simmer, because a hard boil breaks food apart and boils away the liquid. Pasta and potatoes boil.

Sauté comes from a French word for jump. You cook small pieces of food in a little fat over medium-high heat, moving them often, in a wide pan. The onions in Nia’s pilaf were sautéed until soft and golden. Sear is hotter and stiller: a piece of meat goes into a very hot pan with a little oil and sits without moving until a brown crust forms, then turns once. Crowding the pan with too much food drops the temperature, and instead of browning, the food steams in its own juice and turns gray.

Two more words show up in ovens. Bake is dry heat all around the food, usually 325 to 400 °F for cakes, breads and casseroles. Roast is the same dry heat, usually hotter, for meat and vegetables, so the outside browns. Whatever the word, the oven must reach its temperature before the food goes in, which takes 10 to 15 minutes. Turn it on first. The recipe says preheat because a cake that goes into a cold oven spreads before it sets.

Every scaled recipe starts with one number. The factor is the yield you want divided by the yield you have. Nia wanted 40 servings from a recipe for 8: 40 divided by 8 is 5. A recipe for 12 cookies that you want to make into 36: 36 divided by 12 is 3. A recipe for 6 that you want to cut to 3: 3 divided by 6 is 1/2. The factor can be a whole number, a fraction or a decimal, and every single ingredient gets multiplied by the same one.

Write the factor at the top of a clean sheet and work down the ingredient list one line at a time. Do not do it in your head at the stove. For factor 5: 2 cups rice becomes 10 cups; 1 tsp salt becomes 5 tsp; 1/2 tsp pepper becomes 2 1/2 tsp. For factor 1/2: 2 1/4 cups flour becomes 1 1/8 cups; 3/4 cup sugar becomes 3/8 cup; 2 eggs become 1 egg. Check each line twice. A single wrong line, like doubling the salt but not the rice, ruins a pot for forty.

Factors that are not whole numbers take care. A recipe for 8 that you want for 12 has a factor of 12 divided by 8, which is 1 1/2, or 1.5. Two thirds of a cup times 1.5 is 1 cup. One quarter teaspoon times 1.5 is 3/8 teaspoon, which you measure as 1/4 tsp plus 1/8 tsp. If an amount comes out awkward, round to the nearest thing you can measure, but never round salt, leavening or hot pepper up. Those are the ingredients where a little extra is a lot.

Multiplying is half the job. The other half is turning 15 tablespoons and 20 cups into amounts you can actually measure. Use the chart. 16 Tbsp = 1 cup, so 15 Tbsp of oil is 3/4 cup plus 3 Tbsp. 3 tsp = 1 Tbsp, so 5 tsp of salt is 1 Tbsp plus 2 tsp. 4 cups = 1 quart, so 20 cups of broth is 5 quarts; that is a gallon jug plus one quart carton. Write the converted amount next to the multiplied one so both are on the sheet.

Then think about the pot and the pan. Ten cups of rice and twenty cups of broth is 30 cups before the rice swells, and an 8-quart pot holds 32 cups. That is too full to stir safely, and rice needs room. Split it into two pots. Baking has the same problem in a different shape: a doubled cake batter does not fit one 9-inch pan, and a batter twice as deep in the same pan will not bake in the same time. Use two pans of the recipe’s size and keep the baking time.

Some things do not scale by the factor. Cooking time is one. Five times the rice in two pots takes about the same time as one pot, not five times as long, though a much bigger pot takes longer to come to a simmer. Pan size is another. Spices and salt are a third: a big pot often needs a little less than the factor says, so multiply, then taste before the last addition. Seasoning goes in near the end, when you can still fix it.

A cookie recipe makes 48 and you want 24: factor 1/2. A recipe for 12 servings for a family of 4: factor 1/3. Cutting down uses the same rule as scaling up, one factor for every line, but the amounts get awkward faster. Half of 2 1/4 cups flour is 1 1/8 cups, which is 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. Half of 3/4 cup sugar is 3/8 cup, which is 6 Tbsp. Half of 1 tsp baking soda is 1/2 tsp. Half of 1/4 tsp is 1/8 tsp, and most spoon sets have that one.

Eggs are the hard line. Half of 2 eggs is 1 egg, easy. Half of 1 egg is not. Crack the egg into a small bowl, beat it with a fork until yolk and white are blended, and measure out about 2 tablespoons; that is close to half of a large egg. Half of 3 eggs is 1 1/2: use 1 whole egg plus about 2 Tbsp of a second beaten egg. Or change your factor so the eggs come out even: a recipe with 3 eggs cuts to 2/3 more cleanly than to 1/2.

Small amounts of leavening cannot be measured below 1/8 teaspoon, and a third of 1/4 tsp is no spoon anyone owns. In that case use the closest spoon you have and accept a small difference, or scale by a factor that keeps the leavening measurable. Cutting the pan size matters too. A half batch of brownies in the full 9-by-13 pan will be thin and overbake; use an 8-inch square pan, which holds close to half. Keep the oven temperature the same and start checking a few minutes early.

Watch a restaurant cook before the dinner rush. Small containers of diced onion, minced garlic, measured spices and chopped herbs sit in a row at the station. The pans are stacked, the tongs are in reach, the oil is in a squeeze bottle. That is mise en place, French for put in place. Every ingredient is measured and prepped, every tool is out, before a single burner is lit. When an order comes in, the cook only cooks.

In a home kitchen or a class lab, it looks like this. Read the recipe. Set out the pans and tools it names. Wash your hands for 20 seconds. Then go down the ingredient list in order, measuring each one into its own small bowl or onto a plate, doing the prep the comma asks for: dice the onion, soften the butter, beat the egg. Group things that go into the pan together in one bowl. Line the bowls up in the order they are used. Only now do you turn on the heat.

The reason is the clock. Sautéing onions takes about 5 minutes and garlic burns in 30 seconds. If you are still mincing garlic when the onions are done, the onions burn while you finish or the garlic goes in late. With everything measured, your hands are free to stir, watch and taste. Mise en place also catches mistakes early: you discover the missing egg at the counter, not with the batter half mixed. It looks slow. It is the fastest way to cook.

A class lab is 45 minutes, and the food has to be eaten and the kitchen clean when the bell rings. That is a puzzle you solve on paper first. Start at the end. Cleanup takes 8 minutes, so cooking must finish at 37 minutes. Eating takes 5, so the food must be on the plate at 32. Now go backward through the recipe: bake 12 minutes, so it goes in the oven at 20; mixing takes 10, so measuring must be done by 10; measuring and setup take 8; hand washing and reading take 2. The plan fits with a few minutes to spare.

Write it as a list with clock times, not just minutes: 9:00 wash hands and read; 9:02 set out tools and measure; 9:10 mix; 9:20 into the oven, start timer; 9:20 to 9:32 wash mixing bowls while it bakes; 9:32 out of the oven, cool 2 minutes, serve; 9:37 cleanup; 9:45 done. That middle line matters. Waiting time is working time. The bowls get washed while the oven does its job, and cleanup at the end is short.

Two rules make the plan work. Start the longest thing first: the oven preheats in the first minute, water for pasta goes on before the vegetables are cut, rice goes on before the stir-fry starts. And give one person one job when you work in a group. One measures dry, one measures wet, one greases the pan and preheats. Nobody stands and watches. If a step runs long, the plan shows you exactly how much you have lost and what to cut, which is usually the last garnish, not the hand washing.

The recipe says buttermilk and the refrigerator has plain milk. Do not give up, and do not just pour in milk. A substitution is an ingredient that does the same job as the missing one. Buttermilk’s job is to be sour, so it reacts with baking soda and makes the batter rise. Put 1 Tbsp of vinegar or lemon juice in a liquid cup, fill to the 1-cup line with milk, and let it stand 5 minutes. It will look curdled. That is right. Use it as the recipe’s 1 cup of buttermilk.

A few standard swaps cover most kitchen emergencies. 1 tsp baking powder: use 1/4 tsp baking soda plus 1/2 tsp cream of tartar. 1 oz unsweetened baking chocolate: use 3 Tbsp cocoa powder plus 1 Tbsp butter or oil. 1 cup cake flour: use 1 cup all-purpose flour minus 2 Tbsp. 1 cup sour cream in a batter: plain yogurt, cup for cup. Fresh herbs to dried: use one third as much dried, since drying concentrates them. Write these on the same cabinet door as the equivalents chart.

Some swaps change the result and some do not work at all. Oil for butter in cookies makes them spread more and lose the butter taste. Baking soda for baking powder, measure for measure, will not rise and will taste soapy; they are not the same thing. Sugar cut in half in a cake changes its texture, not just its sweetness. Before you swap, ask what the ingredient does: rise, bind, add fat, add sour, add flavor. Swap for something that does the same job, and expect a small change. Then write on the card what you did and how it came out.