"Kitchen Metrics”

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32860, 8 March 1972, Page 6

"Kitchen Metrics”

The first edition of “Kitchen Metrics”, a 12-page booklet designed to make use of the metric system easy for the housewife, is now on sale in bookshops. It has been prepared by the University of Otago’s department of extension studies, at the request of the Metric Advisory Board, and is officially endorsed by the board.

The booklet will be used in home economics classes and will also prove helpful to housewives when meeting the metric system for the first time.

Subjects range from a shopping list to the preparation of a metric meal — it is not a recipe book, but a guide to the use of metrics in the kitchen.

Some tinned and packaged goods already have the weight of their contents marked in grams as well as ounces. The booklet suggests that as goods go on sale in metric weights, housewives buy metric quantities as close as possible to their usual order. For example, when the metric system is fully working, instead of 11b of rice, the housewife will buy 500 grams, which is slightly more

than 11b; instead of a Jib of almonds, she will order 100 grams, equal to almost 3ioz; spices and seasonings which are sold by the ounce will be bought as 25 or 30 grams, or about loz. Bottled foods and drinks will gradually come to be sold in millilitres instead of pints and fluid ounces. “Kitchen Metrics” gives a guide to the purchase of fluids, including flavourings, sauces, soft drinks, and milk. Another section in the booklet gives measurements of baking-tin sizes in common use, as well as cutting and shaping instructions. For example a sponge-roll tin measuring 9in by 14in becomes 23cm by 35cm. The booklet also contains a ready reckoner giving weights in grams of dry ingredients and syrups for an eight-fluid-ounce cup and a 250-millilitre cup. Temperature readings for weather were converted to the Celsius scale in July last year with very few problems. “Kitchen Metrics” contains a useful chart which gives temperature conversions for both gas and electric pvens, electric frypans, refrigerators, and freezers.