What do recepies really mean when they say 1 cup of whatever solid?

mauricio1013
mauricio1013 Posts: 2 Member
edited November 2024 in Food and Nutrition
Alright guys first of all let me apologize for the confusion I may cause you but this is really throwing me off and I am not sure how I’m supposed to measure my ingredients...

Now on to the question. I’m making myself a “wild berry smoothie” which in calls for
.5 cup of raspberries
.5 cup of strawberries
.5 cup of blueberries
so in so forth
Easy enough right? Well as we all know 8oz is one cup. So I proceeded to filled up my 1/2 cup measuring cup (that I happened to place ontop of my scale) and measure out 1/2 cup of blueberries. I was at 2.2 oz of blue berries and my 1/2 cup was full? Shouldint it of weighed 4oz since I was going for half a cup? I then pulled out the full cup measuring cup and I ended up needing to fill up my whole cup to get 4oz which in my head should of weighed the whole 8oz since 8oz is one cup. That also got me thinking and made me realize that half a cup of strawberries would of been like 3-4 and if I wanted 4oz I would need much more. Sooo which one do I go with? Literally half a cup and it be around 2oz? Or 4oz which is half a cup? Someone please help!! I apologize for my very little knowledge on this kind of stuff in advanced

Replies

  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,889 Member
    That is fluid ounces vs ounces, and the reason why nobody should ever weigh solids.
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    edited September 2018
    Just weight the half cups you're adding, and log by weight (add what visually looks like .5 cup, but weigh the content and log that). The database has verified weight options for all of these berries. You're confusing two kinds of measurements, one for volume (fl oz) and one for weight (oz). They're only similar in name and nothing else, which is why it can be confusing. Fluid ounces don't represent weight accurately for anything, even for water like is the case for ml and grams.
    1 fl oz = 29.6 ml, or 29.6 g of water
    1 oz = 28.3 g
  • Evelyn_Gorfram
    Evelyn_Gorfram Posts: 706 Member
    edited September 2018
    mauricio1013 wrote: »
    Alright guys first of all let me apologize for the confusion I may cause you but this is really throwing me off and I am not sure how I’m supposed to measure my ingredients...

    Now on to the question. I’m making myself a “wild berry smoothie” which in calls for
    .5 cup of raspberries
    .5 cup of strawberries
    .5 cup of blueberries
    so in so forth
    Easy enough right? Well as we all know 8oz is one cup. So I proceeded to filled up my 1/2 cup measuring cup (that I happened to place ontop of my scale) and measure out 1/2 cup of blueberries. I was at 2.2 oz of blue berries and my 1/2 cup was full? Shouldint it of weighed 4oz since I was going for half a cup? I then pulled out the full cup measuring cup and I ended up needing to fill up my whole cup to get 4oz which in my head should of weighed the whole 8oz since 8oz is one cup. That also got me thinking and made me realize that half a cup of strawberries would of been like 3-4 and if I wanted 4oz I would need much more. Sooo which one do I go with? Literally half a cup and it be around 2oz? Or 4oz which is half a cup? Someone please help!! I apologize for my very little knowledge on this kind of stuff in advanced
    The problem is that "ounces" can mean "ounces by weight" (as measured on the scale), or "ounces by volume" (as measured with measuring cups). Usually a recipe will say which it's using, but not always.

    And the whole thing is made more confusing by the fact that 1 liquid ounce of room-temperature water weighs exactly 1 solid ounce on the scale (that's how liquid ounces are defined). Lots of other common liquids are about the same, so it gets really easy to get sloppy and/or confused about which kind of "ounces" someone means.

    Let's look at what happed with your blueberries:

    (I'm going to assume that your blueberries had exactly the same density as water: that is, if you had a very big spherical drop of water that was exactly the same size as a very small small blueberry, they would have exactly the same weight. In reality, their density will vary with different types of blueberries & so forth; but this is pretty close.)

    You filled your 1/2 cup (4 liquid oz) measuring cup with blueberries, and they weighed 2.2 oz. The thing is, round shapes like blueberries can't stack to fill all the volume in a measuring cup, so there's some space left over. Your 1/2 cup measure held 2.2 liquid ounces of blueberries, and 1.8 liquid ounces of air. Since air doesn't weigh enough to register on a kitchen scale, only the 2.2 liquid ounces of blueberries contributed to the 2.2 ounces of solid weight you saw on the scale.

    If you pureed your 2.2 solid ounces of berries into liquid and then poured them into the measuring cup; they would take up 2.2 liquid ounces of volume now that there wasn't any air in the volume you were measuring.

    There are a couple of ways to help deal with this:
    • Whenever I can, I try to describe liquid volume measures only in terms of cups, pints, quarts, gallons, teaspoons and tablespoons. Then I don't have to worry about whether I mean liquid ounces or ounces by weight. I do have remember and mess around with conversion factors, but for me the trade-off is worth it.
    • If a recipe doesn't say whether it's using liquid or solid ounces, but uses a volume measure somewhere (ex. "add a quarter-teaspoon vanilla"), I assume it uses liquid ounces throughout. Likewise, if it uses a solid weight measure (ex. "makes 1.5 pounds"), I assume solid measures throughout. If it uses liquid measure in one place and solid measures in another, but still doesn't specify somewhere else, I either make my best guess or I go looking for another recipe.
    • Just weigh everything. Donate your measuring cups, and just use the scale. Volume measurements are always subject to little air spaces causing the volume not being fully filled, and that makes them inherently less accurate than going by weight.
    • You can avoid this whole mess if you go metric. Grams and kilograms are solids, liters and milliliters are liquids. No fuss, no bother - and also no conversion factors. But that is easier said than done if you live in the US and shop, read, eat, and measure in our clunky old seemingly inescapable English system.

    Hope this makes things a little clearer. Please ask me any questions that you still have. :)










  • Evelyn_Gorfram
    Evelyn_Gorfram Posts: 706 Member
    kommodevaran wrote: »
    ... nobody should ever weigh solids.
    Um, I assume you're being facetious here?

    Or maybe you meant "nobody should ever weigh liquids"? (I personally wouldn't agree with that myself, but it would make more sense that way.)
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,423 Member
    mauricio1013 wrote: »
    Alright guys first of all let me apologize for the confusion I may cause you but this is really throwing me off and I am not sure how I’m supposed to measure my ingredients...

    Now on to the question. I’m making myself a “wild berry smoothie” which in calls for
    .5 cup of raspberries
    .5 cup of strawberries
    .5 cup of blueberries
    so in so forth
    Easy enough right? Well as we all know 8oz is one cup. So I proceeded to filled up my 1/2 cup measuring cup (that I happened to place ontop of my scale) and measure out 1/2 cup of blueberries. I was at 2.2 oz of blue berries and my 1/2 cup was full? Shouldint it of weighed 4oz since I was going for half a cup? I then pulled out the full cup measuring cup and I ended up needing to fill up my whole cup to get 4oz which in my head should of weighed the whole 8oz since 8oz is one cup. That also got me thinking and made me realize that half a cup of strawberries would of been like 3-4 and if I wanted 4oz I would need much more. Sooo which one do I go with? Literally half a cup and it be around 2oz? Or 4oz which is half a cup? Someone please help!! I apologize for my very little knowledge on this kind of stuff in advanced

    The problem is that 1/2 c of different foods can fit different amounts in the cup so can weigh very differently. It is a rough guideline of amount to add but does not equal the weight of every food you can cram in to a measuring cup.
    Your best bet for more accuracy is finding or creating a smoothie recipe with weights listed and weighing out your solids each time.
    You could prelog each ingredient by weight if this is all going to be consumed by you today to see what amount of each thing fits your goals and tweak it until it does. So you might log different weight amounts of blueberries and strawberries instead of everything being 2 oz or 4 oz.
    Try using grams if your food scale will show that.
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    Evelyn_Gorfram wrote: »
    kommodevaran wrote: »
    ... nobody should ever weigh solids.
    Um, I assume you're being facetious here?

    Or maybe you meant "nobody should ever weigh liquids"? (I personally wouldn't agree with that myself, but it would make more sense that way.)

    I think it was meant to be "measure solids", as in by cups.
  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,889 Member
    Evelyn_Gorfram wrote: »
    kommodevaran wrote: »
    ... nobody should ever weigh solids.
    Um, I assume you're being facetious here?

    Or maybe you meant "nobody should ever weigh liquids"? (I personally wouldn't agree with that myself, but it would make more sense that way.)
    I wrote wrong, sorry. I meant nobody should ever measure solids, unless "measure" means "weigh".
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
    You're over thinking things which is understandable. It also looks like you were using a bit of misinformation as has been pointed out about fluid ounces and needing to not use a measuring meant for cup for fluids when measuring solids. As others have said, things like berries don't take up the the entire volume of a measuring cup. Unless the recipe is giving measurements by weight, it's all a bit of an estimation game which is perfectly fine in the context of cooking (baking less so which is why so many recipes have weight and/or baker's percentages). It's not going to radically change your smoothie if you have a few fewer raspberries from one day to the next. I mean think about it, how often do you see "2 medium onions" as an ingredient in a recipe as opposed to "X grams onions"?

    If you're worried about counting calories then go ahead and weigh them (the solids, not the liquids). Also know that half a cup of water is going to be a different weight than half a cup of olive oil.
  • Evelyn_Gorfram
    Evelyn_Gorfram Posts: 706 Member
    kommodevaran wrote: »
    Evelyn_Gorfram wrote: »
    kommodevaran wrote: »
    ... nobody should ever weigh solids.
    Um, I assume you're being facetious here?

    Or maybe you meant "nobody should ever weigh liquids"? (I personally wouldn't agree with that myself, but it would make more sense that way.)
    I wrote wrong, sorry. I meant nobody should ever measure solids, unless "measure" means "weigh".
    Thanks. :)

  • mauricio1013
    mauricio1013 Posts: 2 Member
    Thanks to everyone who helped me out here with my question! Sound like the better thing to do is go metric and avoid confusing everything
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