Complex Numbers

Smidgen Forge

It's been a while since I did a cooking article. Well, this is sort of cooking-adjacent, anyway.

    How Much Is a Smidgen?  
The history of measuring a dollop or a pinch.

I always figured a smidgen was what you get when you run over a pigeon. Turns out, I was wrong.

This article is basically an ad for a book, as is common around here, but uncommonly, it's a book I actually would like to read.

It also delves into more than just the "smidgen;" the first section goes into how "stone" became a unit of measurement:

For example, an English statute from around 1300 set a London stone at 12.5 lbs.; however, a stone for weighing lead was said to be 12 lbs., while a stone for measuring beeswax, sugar, pepper, cumin, almonds and alum was 8 lbs., and the stone for weighing glass was 5 lbs. The inconsistent and archaic use of stones continued in Britain for some time.

And, colloquially, they still speak of some weights in terms of (far more standardized) stones there. It took me a while, as an American, to figure out that one stone was 14 pounds, and even longer to convert that to kg (which isn't a proper conversion either, as kg is a unit of mass, not weight, but whatever).

An interesting side note is that, although the stone was not greatly used in America, in 1790 Thomas Jefferson suggested a new decimal system of coinage, weights and measures. His decimal currency was adopted, but his idea to introduce an American stone of 10 lbs. (with each pound weighing ten ounces) was rejected.

I think I did an entry a while back on how we managed to decimalize our currency as a newly-independent nation, but attempts to decimalize anything else failed miserably. The UK, in contrast, didn't use a decimal-based currency until almost 200 years later.

Smidgen, pinch, dollop, dash, and drop

I did promise a cooking-adjacent thing up there, and this is it.

Most people recognize that they refer to a small amount of something, but just how small is left open to interpretation.

In fairness, some recipes are more forgiving than others when it comes to quantities.

Smidgen is generally used to refer to an almost trace amount, a few grains or a tiny sliver.

Still wiggly, since it doesn't specify the size of the grains or how tiny "tiny" is.

To assist novice cooks it seems some American food writers have begun giving exact measurements (as fractions of teaspoons) to the traditionally in­exact terms. A dash is said to be 1/8 of a teaspoon, a pinch 1/16 of a teaspoon, a smidgen 1/32 of a teaspoon, and a drop 1/64 of a teaspoon. You can now even purchase a set of measuring spoons for these tiny amounts.

Meanwhile, I wish we'd get rid of "teaspoon" and just measure everything in grams. Far more precise. Some ingredients don't fit nicely into a teaspoon, tablespoon, or even a cup. Ever try to measure 1/4 cup of brussels sprouts? No amount of precision in the manufacturing of the 1/4 cup measure can fix the problem.

There's a lot more explanation at the link, including (my favorite part) the etymology of some of these words. And, clearly, there's even more in the book.