When did kitchen scales become prevalent in Europe?

April 15, 2022 4:53 PM

Measuring ingredients by weight instead of volume has become more common in North American kitchens only in recent years (I think the US and Canada are similar in this regard), while it’s long been standard practice in much of Europe. So when did home cooks in European countries and other parts of the world begin using kitchen scales en masse? I can imagine it may have been linked to metrication to some extent, but I believe weights were typical in UK recipes (for example) well before the metrication of consumer goods there.
posted by theory to Food & Drink (16 answers total)

My grandmother brought cookbooks in 1923 that use metric weights when she emigrated from Germany, including the Pfund -- 500 g.

During her Germany trip in 1979, my mother bought a Oetker brand Messbecher for her German cookbooks. It's a conical, aluminum measuring cup marked on the interior with the equivalent volume for weights of common ingredients like flour, rice and lentils.

An even older Fuchs brand Messbecher somehow made it's way into my kitchen.
posted by JawnBigboote at 5:46 PM on April 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

So I went out to look at my old cookbooks, and the one by Madam Mangor was originally printed in 1837, and it has measurements by (old) weights, with metric measurements in parentheses.
I also have a very old weight that belonged to my great-great grandmother, and is as accurate as my digital weight (but hard to read at the small differences, hence the digital alternative). I'm guessing that measuring by weight goes way back in at least parts of Europe. I also can't see why not? Weights are simple tools.
posted by mumimor at 6:18 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

Looking through the many historical recipes quoted in Elizabeth David's "English Bread and Yeast Cookery", it appears that UK cooks have been mostly measuring by weight for as long as they've been including quantities in their recipes - she quotes several 17th-century recipes that expect the cook to measure fruit or sugar accurately by weight, for example.

Large quantities of flour are given by volume in the earlier recipes (mostly pre-18th-century), but she notes in the chapter on bread measurements that because commercial bread prices were legally regulated by weight (from 1266 to 1815 in England), bakers were keenly aware of how volume corresponded to weight for their ingredients.
posted by offog at 6:21 PM on April 15, 2022 [5 favorites]

Mrs. Beeton's book of household management (1861) uses volume measurements for spices, etc. I would like to stand up and look at my copy of La Bonne Cuisine de Mme. Saint-Ange, but there's a furry creature splayed over my legs.

I'm guessing that measuring by weight goes way back in at least parts of Europe. I also can't see why not? Weights are simple tools.

Accurately weighing small amounts of items by hand is a pain in the ass, I recall from high school science classes.
posted by praemunire at 6:22 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: I should have gone into more detail to say that what I'm particularly interested in are the factors that led to measuring ingredients by weight becoming the norm in Europe and elsewhere but not in North America.

I understand the benefits of weight vs volume (at least for bulk ingredients). What I'm curious about is when and why home bakers in the UK (for example) started weighing their flour at some point in the distant past while home bakers in the US stuck with volume. Was th?e cost of a scale prohibitive in the US but not in the UK
posted by theory at 6:31 PM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Mrs Beeton also has weights for bulk ingredients, and even for spices where there's a lot (I've just opened a page at a recipe needing 1/4lb mustard). Volume measurements for smaller quantities of spices and condiments (1tsp of cinnamon, 1tsp of salt) have long been a thing and that's still true today.

I also note that her bread recipes refer to a peck of flour; apparently in the US that is a volume measurement and in the UK it's both (!) and they're not the same (!!), at least when flour is involved.

Also, predating spring scales is the balance scale, which some people do still use. So it's not like weighing accurately needs a modern, fragile or expensive technology - maybe weights predate volumes?

(Speaking personally, with the advent of digital scales that you can put a jug or bowl on, I usually also weigh milk at this point, along with anything else that is basically water where 1fl oz is about 1oz and the conversion is trivial. Much easier. If only a pint were a pound the world around, but in the UK it's a pound and a quarter...)
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 7:08 PM on April 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

What I'm curious about is when and why home bakers in the UK (for example) started weighing their flour at some point in the distant past while home bakers in the US stuck with volume.

“Stuck with volume” assumes some time in the past when everyone measured in volume. The answers in this thread seem to suggest weight was the norm several centuries ago. So your question should perhaps be “why did home bakers in the US switch to volume?”
posted by caek at 7:26 PM on April 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Yes, caek, fundamentally my question should be: "Why was measuring ingredients by weight uncommon in North America until recently when it has been the norm in Europe for centuries." It would seem that tens of millions of European colonizers and immigrants abandoned the practice of using kitchen scales on arriving in North America.
posted by theory at 7:57 PM on April 15, 2022

There’s a 1920s suspiciously-like-a-Messbecher made in England, the Tala Cook’s Measure. Which of those came first? Probably the Messbecher? But when the V&A talked about the Tala Curry Measure they didn’t mention the Messbecher.

Returning from this side issue, I’d bet on volume measure coming from some specific US institution deciding it was modern and/or easy. Fannie Farmer, the Extension service, an early College of Domestic Science? Hmm!
posted by clew at 8:16 PM on April 15, 2022

UK essay taking all the piss out of US volume measures by earnestly explaining how to use them.

Ha! Wikipedia says Fannie Farmers Boston School introduced measurement by volume! I have not checked her cookbook or ones published a bit earlier though.
posted by clew at 8:26 PM on April 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

Best answer: "The question remains of why the practice did not develop in Europe (ignoring the rest of the world just to simplify) and who introduced it. Ever since this question was raised at the Cooking SE I have been thinking of giving it a full answer, but it turned out to be harder than I originally thought. I wrote several food historians, dug through the Library of Congress, and read many old cookbooks. The full answer, whatever it is, has to do with the rise of middle class in America, literacy rates, the existence of an educated rural population, the Domestic Science movement, the development of cheap and robust weighing scales, and how these factor where different in the 1800s in Europe.

Mary Lincoln, one of Farmer’s instructors at the school published in 1884 (twelve years before Farmer) the well read Mrs. Lincoln’s Boston Cook Book subtitled What to do and what not to do in cooking. The introductory chapter contain sections on different techniques used in the kitchen, including one on measuring. The first paragraph suggests to inexperienced cook: “…use your spoon and cup or scales” to measure. "
The paragraph I quoted from this blog post kind of ends before it addresses any of the things it's going to address but it found a very early mention of it.
posted by bleep at 9:04 PM on April 15, 2022 [5 favorites]

I think you're probably overestimating how much home cooks in the past would have measured anything at all, by volume or by weight. Historical cookbooks may give measurements, but most people weren't using cookbooks. Most people were just cooking by eye based on recipes they probably learned as kids. It was very common to buy baked goods from a local bakery in Europe for many centuries rather than producing them at home. Even if you're baking your own bread, it's pretty easy to mix your dough by eye and adjust it by feel while kneading if you're baking regularly.

Before the printing press, cookbooks were obviously not something a common person would own and would only have been used by people who were professionals serving the rich. Once cookbooks did become more common for working class people, it would only make sense for them to use the same measures that ingredients were sold in, which was by weight.

I wonder if there was a American frontier aspect, in that early American settlers would have been more likely to be buying flour, sugar, or other ingredients in large quantities to last them for a year or so, making it impossible to just buy the required amount exactly and harder to estimate the required amount by dividing whatever you have in half or quarters. I imagine settlers would also be less likely to carry a balance with them, while everyone would have some kind of cup to measure with.
posted by ssg at 9:33 PM on April 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

Elizabeth David gives fluid-ounce measurements to explain the difference between different kinds of cups and bowls used in English and French traditional informal recipes, so clearly it’s not estimating amounts by volume that’s novel. It’s something about normativity or about replacing measures by weight.
posted by clew at 9:34 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

The existence of the "fluid ounce" is a result of the American system of units diverging from what we now call Imperial units in the UK. The US wanted to rationalise units at a time when there were competing standards (mostly split by types of goods, rather than countries of origin), and came up with a compromise that wasn't as dramatic as the metric system, but had similar aims: one pint is now one pound of water, and you can count smaller units of volume equivalent to one ounce of water. It is an incredible improvement on the Imperial system, and yet still a far cry from the advantages of SI.

I wonder if fixing units of volume made them more approachable to people who had previously had only weight as a standard. If you've just made cups, pints, quarts, gallons and bushels a federal standard, then it might have encouraged adoption.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:09 AM on April 16, 2022

Best answer: "Why was measuring ingredients by weight uncommon in North America until recently when it has been the norm in Europe for centuries."

Ber Wilson goes into detail in her book Consider the Fork. I’ve only got the audiobook (highly recommend) so I can’t go back and double check but I’m pretty sure it’s to do with Fannie Farmer’s influence and popularity. It also has something to do with the colonisation of America and not being able to carry weights.
posted by poxandplague at 4:50 AM on April 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

Just wanted to second the recommendation of Consider the Fork. There's a good part of a chapter on the US shift from scales to cups, and yes it involves the frontier mentality and Fannie Farmer, but I really wouldn't be doing it justice if I tried to summarise it. She writes beautifully; do seek it out!
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 3:44 AM on April 27, 2022