A few years ago I worked on a cookbook with a chef whose recipes were, shall we say, less than precise.
As an old-school cook, he worked primarily by touch and intuition, adding a pinch of this and a splash of that without measuring. By sight, he knew when there was enough spice, when a mixture was stirred enough, and when the dish was ready to come out of the oven or wok.
To these guys, cooking isn’t and will never be an exact science. Instead, it’s an interpretative, improvising art form – which they have great trouble articulating. But it was my job to translate the alchemy into a decipherable tome of spells.
Part of demystifying the imprecision was to commit the ingredient and proportions to a document. I would have to gauge how much of any element was incorporated. Is that a teaspoon of turmeric? Half a bottle of red wine for the sauce? How many ounces of cream to each pound of potato?
Sometimes, the chef (or his assistant) would try to provide an ingredients list, but it often ended up being more work to clarify the odd measurements. There were liquid elements given in weight (grams) rather than volume (fluid ounces).
Other inconsistencies included some recipes designed for four servings, while others were written for six to eight. I had to be aware of typos, such as the suggestion a dish needed five litres of oil when it actually required 0.5 litres.
The biggest headache was simply deciding whether to conform to imperial or metric standards. Even though Hong Kong is mostly metric, every kitchen deals with both systems.
A cup of flour is typically 250 grams, while a cup of milk is eight fluid ounces or 237 millilitres. A tablespoon sounds so much simpler than 14.8ml or 0.5fl oz, but it’s worth noting that a tablespoon is slightly different in Canada (exactly 15ml or 0.51 fl oz) and Australia (20ml or 0.68 fl oz).
In the end, we decided on metric, although part of me thinks a reader would prefer to add a tablespoon of cocoa than measure out 14.175 grams. The chef actually did not care if we mixed quarts and litres, grams and pounds, and Celsius and Fahrenheit. I think most people mix the systems together like the swirl in a marble cake.
In a Reddit forum that debates the merits of metric versus imperial, most folks do not have a strong preference. One baker noted, “Generally, I prefer imperial, because I don’t want to bother using scales for every little thing. Metric does give more consistent results though”.
Here in Hong Kong, one measure I have trouble with to this day is the catty. Still the prominent scale for meat and vegetable sellers at markets across the city – as well as throughout East and Southeast Asia – a catty is roughly 1.3 pounds (just over 600 grams).
My problem is I often have a mental block and switch the pound-catty ratio. It’s an issue when I do price comparison at fruit stalls. One vendor sells “per pound” while another is “per catty”. The idiot that I am sometimes gets confused thinking the pound is heavier.
By any measure, it’s a minor inconvenience, such as this week when I ended up buying slightly more expensive lychees at the market.
I guess it’s hard to shake off my old imperial mindset. Down with foreign rulers!
