Why do people use measurements?

Question

When you get a recipe for making a meal, cake , cookies, etc. Why do they put specific measurements? When the person who actuall came up with the concosion they did not say 1 tsp. of salt, 1/2 tbsp. butter, etc., what they did was mixed it together cooked it the way they wanted, with their taste buds and tried it out. The way I make my concosions is the same. I look in my cabinet see what I have see what my taste good together, see what seasonings I have that could possibly flavor it to my taste buds then cook it. I do no measuring. When you watch Racheal Ray she does the exact same thing she gets everything she needs for the recipe then begins making it, but uses no measuring. So, why do recipes come with measurements?

Answer 1

Recipes come with measurements to assure the same results each time. For some recipes, especially in baking, it is very important to follow the recipe exactly or it will not turn out right.

Answer 2

there are different kinds of cooking that require a different approach, if I want to make a savoury dish I will often just rummage around in the fridge & cupboards & see what I fancy putting together & refine it by taste. But if I want to make a specific 'thing', maybe that I have never tried before I will follow a recipe that someone else has worked out, this gives me a basic understanding of how unfamiliar ingredients or flavours work together & next time I make this 'thing' I can tweak it to my personal taste. When Racheal Ray cooks I am sure she is demonstrating dishes she is familiar with & has worked out what is required, she is probably also very good at judging amounts by eye - not a skill everyone has. Altogether different to me is baking, I always measure ingredients even though I am very experienced as I know that variations in the proportions of ingredients will affect the texture if not always the taste. If I wish to try adding a new flavour I keep a note of what & how much so that I can replicate or refine as necessary next time. Imagine what would be the result if you had never baked a cake & were just told "butter, caster sugar, eggs & self-raising flour", where would you start?

Answer 3

Recipes come with measurements so people can duplicate the taste of a particular dish they want to make.

Rachel Ray has admitted several times she can't bake, and cooking is an art, but baking is a science.

When cooking, you can fool around all you want with the ingredients and amounts, but when baking, if you use too much of something, not enough of another, or skip a key ingredient, you are likely to have terrible results. A cake that doesn't rise or cookies that are as hard a rocks.

If you don't believe me, try leaving the baking soda and/or baking powder out of a cake recipe, or using only half the yeast called for in a bread recipe, or putting twice as much flour in a cookie recipe as it calls for!

Answer 4

I'd say I measure about 40% of the time. I want the same thing every time for some things. Especially baking, tortilla dough, rice, those kind of things that have to be exact. But seasonings, herbs, cream sauce, cheese, those kind of things I can eyeball. Measurements are also good for novices who are learning to cook. The more they cook, then they can futz with the recipe the next time. Look at an old church or community cookbook, a lot of recipes are "a handfull", "the size of an egg", and other vague descriptions. Beginners might have trouble if they don't get it right the first time and think they can't cook. Think of measurements as a good jumping off point for learning to cook.

Answer 5

This is a two part question, because baking and cooking are very different activities.

In general, however, recipes are designed to provide uniform results for everyone. For example, if I want to replicate exactly the peach-raspberry tart I ate at a picnic on Sunday, I want the exact ingredients and how much was used.

Which brings us to baking. Baking requires exact measurements, especially of foundational ingredients like flour, leavening (yeast, baking powder, etc.), salt and sugar, because that affects the quality of the final product. For example, too much salt not only makes for salty bread, but it inhibits rising. And, to a certain extent, so do ingredients that provide flavor. Nuts are notorious for interfering with the texture of the baked goods (which is why they are added last to any recipe).

Now, as for cooking, you're exactly right in saying that it doesn't really matter about what ingredients match together where, although it is nice to have a guide.

Think about baking as being a chemistry project, where preciseness matters, and cooking as an art project. Both have their joys and their limitations. I do both and find they satisfy different parts of my life.

Answer 6

Granted, in cooking there is lots of room for improvisation, but that doesn't mean you can do away with measurements altogether. Cooking also involves chemistry, with ingredients combined and then heated (often) to produce specific effects.

Most recipes are developed over time to see which proportions of ingredients give the optimal result, and experienced cooks often have a sense of these appropriate proportions which they rely on, as they improvise, not straying far from the proven measurements. For example, there are lots of ways to make a pie crust, but depending on the ingredients and proportions you will have crusts with different properties (hard, crumbly, flaky, sticky, etc.)--same with cakes and lots of other things. I am all for innovations, but try just dumping together random amounts of flour, sugar, butter, egg and not measuring anything and see how your cake turns out.

Answer 7

Over a long period of time, expert cooks have come to determine by trial and error very closely how much of this or that ingredient goes best with the other ingredients to produce the overall best result, so obviously, when they write their cook books, or pass their favorite recipes along, they give their experienced advice.

So many people are simply NOT either expert- or long-time experienced cooks, that it wouldn't be much use writing up a recipe just saying.... flour.... eggs.... salt...... sugar...... etc. etc. etc. now would it? I certainly wouldn't want to have to waste a ton of money buying a set of ingredients for something, and then have to try, and screw up a dozen or more times, and then might still not get it right. Those cooks from whom these recipes originate, you must remember, are passing on many years of cooking experience. They give US "lesser mortals" the benefit of their years of t rials and errors, so that we can hopefully get it right, the first time.

Answer 8

To be a (good) cook you need to learn certain rules and these rules are in the measurements... Once you have mastered a dish then you can begin to "mess" with the amount of ingredients.
Think of it like this: When you fist saw an abstract painting your fist impression might have been to say, "Hey, I can do that". But did you know that Picasso, Kandinsky and even Jackson Pollock had formal training. They first learned technique (to paint by the numbers) before they went on to develop their own styles.....

Answer 9

Measuring in recipes are for the lucky individuals who were born without the ability to measure by look or taste. I am like you I never measure, but my mom, she needs to measure, or its a disaster.

Answer 10

To assure consistency of results ! You do want your sucsessful recipes to turn out the same next time, don't you?