Tuesday, November 22, 2016

A Matter of Measure

If you work with Victorian recipes long enough, you will run across some units of measure we no longer use.  The most common head-scratcher deals with oven temperature and terms like a slow, moderate or quick oven. The last thing you want to do is take your newest culinary masterpiece and incinerate the poor thing.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, let’s cure the oven temperature dilemma.

Very slow (very low) oven: 300-325° F.
Slow (low) oven: 325-350° F.
Moderate (medium) oven: 350-375° F.
Fast/quick (high) oven: 375-400° F.
Very fast/very quick (very high) oven: 400-425° F

Old recipe books also abound with recipes calling for tea cup and coffee cup amounts of ingredients.  I use a beautiful old glass measuring pitcher that has these measures embossed on its side.  One tea cup equals four ounces, also known as a gill, a coffee cup is eight ounces.
 

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