For the last *ages* I have been assuming that they put more things in packets than they say on the outside. This time last year when making elderflower cordial, I noticed that the 50gram tube of citric acid I bought had 75grams in it when I weighed it out for a recipe.
Today, I was weighing for elderflower cordial again and I noticed that the 1 kilo bag of sugar I’d bought clocked in at 1400 grams – like the citric acid, almost half again free!
Now I know that when it says “1 kg e” on the outside it means “more or less 1kg” – sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. But how lucky I am that most of the time much of what I buy is so generous!
P was passing, so I called him in to share my excitement and he looked at me puzzled, and I realised it was one of those many times when he sees the world differently.
“Um.” he said. “Could it…?”
Could it just be the scales?
Ah. Yes. Yes indeed it could. And in fact it might explain a lot about my various successes and lack thereof, kitchen wise, in the last few years.
So, we devised a little bit of an experiment. A millilitre of water weighs a gram, a litre weighs a kilo. So 500mls of water should be 500gram.
And it wasn’t:
Bah.
Niles's Blog 
This made me laugh! I’ve had problems with the analogue dial-type scales where every time I remove the pan and replace it to double check a weight, the scale tells me something different…but that could just be me! Date and cinnamon cake in the oven as I type.
In internet parlance that would be a ‘scale fail’
Um, while I’m pretty sure you need more accurate scales, none of my many measuring jugs agrees with any other – not even the two pyrex ones.
Cooking is an art not a science.
For cakes I tend to follow granny’s recipe – same weight of eggs, flour, butter and sugar. That way it doesn’t matter what the scales say as long as they always say the same for the same eggs.
After you do this sort of thing for a long time, you don’t even need a scale anymore. You have a feeling for that sort of thing 🙂