A handful is...?

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Posted at 12:02PM, 09 April 2008 by Jenni Muir - Food writer

Years ago I worked at a big publishing house where the rule was that all amounts under 75ml should be given in tablespoons. It seemed sensible - as accurate as we were likely to get in the real world - so I never really questioned it.

But I'm currently working with a chef who loves his millilitres, and we have 50ml of this and 40ml of that in lots of recipes. I can see his point - you take a good millilitre measuring jug and can just keep adding liquid ingredients to it. So, say, when you've got 50ml of oil in a jug and you need to use 40ml soy sauce, you add enough soy sauce to take the level up to 90ml. Phew!

But he also wants to get rid of tablespoon measures for things like herbs. He thinks tablespoons are too prissy and prefers terms like 'a handful' and 'a small bunch'. Given the confusion between tablespoon sizes Jamie Oliver's appeal and why novice cooks like my step-father are tempted into the kitchen by his recipes

But I also know that people's perceptions of 'a handful' and 'a bunch' vary hugely. One time, I asked a chef what his idea of a handful was and he showed me two big rugby player's hands cupped together - 'Huh?!' A Lebanese author said a bunch was the huge bundle of coriander or flat-leaf parsley she'd pick up in a Middle Eastern shop while an English cookery writer told me a bunch was the size of the bags of herbs in Waitrose (and if you shopped at Sainsbury or Tesco you'd be wrong!).

A lot of the time it simply doesn't make much difference, but the big bunches some chefs and my Lebanese friend would use can total a few hundred grams - quite a difference from the 10 to 20g bags in the local supermarket. And you wouldn't want to be using ten times too much with a powerful ingredient like rosemary or sage.

Mind you, people have been cooking successfully for thousands of years without needing to refer to recipes at all, so does it really matter?

Comments

Gayns

9 April 2008, 10:16PM
Gayns

was making slow cooked lamb with onions & thyme last night and had this dilema as the ingredients for fresh herbs stated handfuls or large handfuls for the parsley & thyme. obviously hands and perceptions of handfuls are very different so it can make a lot of difference to the end result. I think you can allow for this with milder flavours like parsley but stronger herbs can ruin a dish. fortunately my lamb was lovely but I agree there is a huge gamble here.

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James

10 April 2008, 2:00PM
James

The trouble with us chefs is we cook by instinct. I read cookery books as bedtime reading then recreate my own interpretation in the kitchen leaving the book on the bedside table. I measure in 'a little, somety, quite a bit, a lot' etc. It's quite right what you say - when you spend 14 or 16 hours a day with food, you just know how much to use. AUntil it comes to anything sugar/ pastry/ dessert wise - that is a science and amounts matter. It does annoy me when an amount is stated as 60ml and my measuring jug starts at 100ml. But then if you don't guess sometimes you never make something your own & you never create something new.....

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James

10 April 2008, 2:06PM
James

.... Putting real measured amounts in a recipe can be dangerous for a chef, because we don't use them. If you taste it and it's not quite what you wanted you just add more of something, the way Remy does in Ratatouille. Put on the spot quite often you guess measurements - which is why the un-tested 'recipes' don't turn out the same for people at home. And if they turn out not to work for you, you feel less inclined to try any more of their recipes, hence you get the glug...glug....glug effect.

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Antonia

11 April 2008, 3:01PM
Antonia

I much prefer using recipes with fairly vague quantites - it is much more 'real' to me and I don't want to whip out the scales and measuring jugs every time I use a recipe. But then, I'm a reasonably experienced cook so am confident enough to use my instinct. Precise measurements are useful for those new to cooking and fairly essential for baking. The thing that really annoys me though is when recipes state a certain weight of golden syrup or treacle (or similarly sticky liquid). Impossible to weigh and then add to the dish - so much more practical to use tablespoons here.

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SUE

4 May 2008, 5:42PM
SUE

If I have to weigh treacle or golden syrup, I put the bowl or pan on my digital scale, and just weigh it in

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