French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [64]
For those who use French and American cookery books as well as English ones, there is also the question of differing units of weight and measurement. To convert kilos and grammes into pounds and ounces is simple enough, given that both French and English recipes are based on the system of weighing with scales. The American method, that of measuring everything by volume, makes the conversion of their recipes and vice versa much more difficult; and the fact that American liquid measurements are based on the 16-ounce pint instead of the English 20-ounce Imperial pint, makes for further confusion.
Some of these confusions I have tried to sort out in the following tables of approximately equivalent measurements. And please bear in mind that when I say approximate I mean that these equivalents are sufficiently accurate for the conversion of recipes but would not be accepted by a Standards Board. For that matter, neither would the majority of scales in common domestic use, and as for the cup-measuring system for solid ingredients, it appears to me even more chancy.
SOLID MEASUREMENTS
LIQUID MEASUREMENTS
SOLID MEASUREMENTS
LIQUID MEASUREMENTS
COOKERY BOOK MEASUREMENTS
How much, I am sometimes asked, is a pinch, a dash, a drop, a suspicion, a glass? When such measurements are given in a cookery book, it is fairly obvious that a little more or a little less will make no difference, and that precise amounts of, say, salt, nutmeg, garlic or other flavourings must be left to each cook’s discretion. However, for those who are worried by the vagueness of such directions, here are the interpretations, most of them as given by Philéas Gilbert in the 1931 edition of La Cuisine deTous Les Mois. The table was not included in the original edition of this work, so one concludes that it was at the requests of readers that he included it in the revised edition. I do not really see of what practical use it is to know how many grains constitute a ‘pinch’ because few of us possess chemists’ scales on which to weigh out such minute quantities. But for occasions when one might wish to calculate a recipe in large quantities, the knowledge would be useful.
LIQUID MEASUREMENTS
SOLID MEASUREMENTS
TEMPERATURES AND TIMING
The following table should be regarded only as an approximate guide, and the temperatures given in the recipes in this book should be taken to mean those appropriate to the oven of an ordinary average-sized domestic cooker. (For cooking in very small or very large ovens, temperatures very often have to be adjusted; lowered slightly in the first case and increased in the second.) But even with tricky dishes like soufflés and the roasting of small birds, a certain margin of difference can be allowed both in temperature and timing. For large birds, roasts and stews the latitude is greater. It does not, for example, make a vast difference if you cook a stew at gas No. 1 or No. 2, or if you roast a chicken at 380 deg. or 390 deg. F. And although a certain degree of reliability has been achieved in the regulation of modern ovens, a great many people still use cookers on which the oven temperature controls bear little relation to reality. Only experience of your own oven, or alternatively the purchase of a thermometer, can be the solution in these cases. But please do bear in mind that as far as oven-cooked stews and similar dishes are concerned, timing, temperatures and quantities of liquid are calculated for cooking in earthenware, iron, or other heavy pots with properly fitting lids, so that the food will heat slowly and cook evenly with the minimum of evaporation of the liquid.