G'day

I have been looking at a American cook book and in some of the recipes it calls for 'sticks of butter'.I emailed my US cousin asking what the weight in either ounces or grams is and she said that it depends on the state you live in! I find this really hard to believe but then she freely admits to intensely dislikes cooking.

I know this website is a UK site, but there are so many knowledgable people on this site I wonder if anyone can tell me how many grams that works out to approximately please.(I really think the cousin is pulling my chain here)

cheers

June

Hi june,

A stick of butter is the equivalent of 113 grams in the UK.

Our average blocks/packs of butter are 250g so you would need just under half.

Hope this helps

Form this website; http://www.traditionaloven.com/conversions_of_measures/butter_converter.html

1 stick = 1/2cup 113.4g 4oz 0.25lb 0.113Kg 8tbs. 24tsp.

You learn something new every day! Never having heard of a 'stick of butter,' on looking it up it seems June's cousin is right in that the shape of a stick varies across America (with different shaped butter dishes to match!) However there should now be conformity in the weight of 'a stick' at 4oz = 113g.

It is like saying "half a pack of butter" in the UK (as long as it is a 250g pack!)

I have seen it in America, it looks like our butter block slit in half lengthways.

We here in Australia also get butter in either 250g or 500g so many thanks to all for the very quick response and the conversion website.

I reckon the responses were quicker then me googling.... ah the www is indeed a wonderful thing.

Cheers

June

Hi June,

I am in Australia too and sometimes try US or Canadian recipes from the Internet. I too have encountered the slightly weird stick of butter thing. I now assume it is 4 OZ (as others have said here) but as my present scales don't have ounces to grams conversion we have an old kids' school calculator on the on the kitchen bench so we can convert ounce amounts to grams. (This is also needed for all my old cookbooks which are pre-grams.)

I gather that lots of American cooks don't have kitchen scales, hence the really odd measurements in recipes like tablespoons or quarter cups of butter. How do you measure this if the butter is cold from the refrigerator? Ah well.

Heather

At least with a 250g pack of butter from the fridge, you can cut by eye "a half of a half of a half" to get one ounce. Some brands still have those little marks printed on the wrapper for cooks lacking spatial awareness!

Winton

Thanks Heather,

I think it is also weird that the US put measurement in their recipes in cups and spoons rather then weight.

I found out also that the US metric cup size is not the same as the Australian and possibly the UK.

I bought a bread maker and could not understand why the bread kept on coming out a complete failure (a big flat hard pancake shape) until the lady at the bread shop told me that the cup that comes with the breadmaker is the US measure and therefore too much water for the recipe when using the Aust bread flour.Learning by trial and error is all very interesting.

Cheers

June

I am a scientist and have great problems with American scientific papers, where they still use ?F, pounds, ozs, psi, inches, etc. In the rest of the world, we use the mks system or metre kilogramme second. Believe me, this mks system is far easier to use, the Americans should really drag themselves through the 20th century into the 21st. A common language separated by common sense!

And as for American cooking, I refused to cook when I was there last year. I needn't have been bothered, though, everything came out of a packet, a new recipe was just a different combination of packets!

Am I being a grumps?

No Lapis, you have my full support!

I am a member of the 'lost generation' - naturally thinking in yards, ounces, gallons etc. but only being taught to calculate in the metric system. I still have to "double it and add thirty" when listening to the weather forecast. Near enough, but not much use in a scientific experiment!

I remember my mum's jubilation (she was a primary school teacher) at decimalisation, and no longer having to teach kids maths with the complications of "old money and imperial measurements!"

Winton

I remember when India converted to decimals I think iot was in ninteen fifties. As its masses were illiterate then (still are to an extent), there was a worry that this will cause problems. But no, all rickshaw Walla?s, maids, vilaagers and street hackers learnt it overnight without much problem. I can't understand it when some people in an educated country like UK still offer resistance to metric system, it is so much easier to calculate i :-).

mamta

We cooked a lot when we were teaching at an American university for a semester: the Indian and Chinese/Korean supermarkets were great (we got their details from this site), so we found everything we needed.

What I found odd was the 'grab it and go' attitude to lunch during the week: some American colleagues took only 20 mins for lunch. Here in France, we take at least an hour, preferably an hour and a half.

I must be really old, I can remember in the cobwebs of my mind, a stick

of butter being a half pack or 4 ozs of butter!! I love it when our memories

are taxed!!

"I love it when our memories are taxed!!"

Mine are taxed all the time ;-)!

Thank goodness for metric system! Decimalisation came to Australia in 1966. I was a 9 yo at the time.

Prior to the change over there was this great ad on tv which went to the tune of an old Australian song "Click go the Shears" and the words were:

In come the dollars and in come the cents, to replace the pounds, shillings and the pence.

So, be prepared folks when the coins begin to mix on the 14th of February 1966!"

Back to American cooking. You are so correct Lapis when mentioning about opening packets to make a meal. A couple of months ago we had an American visitor come and stay for 8 weeks.

Anyhow she was amazed when I made when all meals, cakes, muffins etc from scratch cos that is not what most people do in the good old USA. She went onto tell me about all these great packets that just required water or some other medium.

I do not know who was more surprised - her or myself with what she was saying lol.

Well I suppose it takes all sorts.

cheers

J

Yes, that packet cuisine culture is dreadful, but it's not all like that in the US: we were invited to a fantastic Thanksgiving lunch at someone's ranch: not a packet in sight, just good (really good) home cooking.

We also had excellent food at a friend's home in San Francisco. And his wine cellar was exceptional.

Phil

Yep, as I said Phil, it takes all types:)

cheers

June