Now that the sting has worn off a bit, we can divulge the full story of how we bought the wrong amount of strawberries for our review of the Gluten-Free Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble.
It was all because--on the spot, in the store, without Google Calculator to save us--we couldn't remember how many cups were in a quart!
Telling this story to a friend later, she laughed and said, "Don't you know about the gallon-eating-the-quarts trick?"
At our blank look, she grabbed a pen and drew a diagram like the one above...
So there's:
2 Cups in a Pint
2 Pints in a Quart
4 Quarts in a Gallon
And so two "C's" fit inside a "P," two "P's" fit inside a "Q," and four "Q's" fit inside a big, enormous "G."
It's like "the woman who swallowed a fly" for cups and quarts!
It still takes a few minutes of mental visualization, but with this diagram in mind, you can easily figure out that there are four cups in a quart, 16 cups in a gallon, and so on.
Fingers crossed--with luck we'll never find ourselves in this particular grocery store conundrum again!
Any other good memory tricks you use when cooking?
Related: Measuring: Dip and Sweep
(Image by Emma Christensen for the Kitchn)
This is great - a print-out is going on my fridge.
view amt230's profile
And a pint is pound world renown!
so, 16 oz. or one pint = 1 lb.
and a half pint or 8 oz. = 1/2 lb.
view art's profile
Oh that is awesome...and a font-lover's dream!
view Michelle of Montreal's profile
wait, that's kinda brilliant! turn that badboy into a graphic for dishtowels and ovenmitts and you'll be a gazillionaire. :)
view kdkaboom's profile
How about putting that graphic onto reusable shopping bags? Then it would be with us when we need it :)
view 22209's profile
Art -- that's really only for water. You could get yourself in trouble if you use that mnemonic (I always heard Alton Brown saying, "A pint's a pound the world around") for corn syrup, for example.
view ArlingtonEric's profile
When making rice
Water's twice
(Makes thrice)
view Married ...with Dinner's profile
i learned that diagram in elementary school and have never forgotten it! hooray for childhood cooking memories (or at least memory aids)!
view katiebug's profile
A quart means a quarter of a gallon. Or was that so obvious that it's not worth pointing out? Also, 4 cups in a quart, easy to remember since quart means four. (On a smaller scale, same theme, four ounces in a quarter cup.)
I use the pint/pound thing often. Most (wet) food is mostly water or oil anyway so it's close enough for me.
view erica's profile
Erica-
All my years in school and it never occurred to me that a quart referred to quarter of a gallon....duh
view zero's profile
Erica-
Wouldn't it be four ounces in a half cup?
view zhasmene's profile
It's more simple to remember numbers than this kind of phrases. Why do you think it's so hard to remember a number ?
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az physical therapist
view EddieSmith's profile
...all this means that it's time to pass to the wonders of the metric system :)
view plch's profile
Erica you just destroyed my brownies!
maybe 4 oz in a 1/4 pint
view funstraw's profile
LOVE THE GRAPHIC!
I learned the quart/gallon thing the hard way, at eight years old.......dad sent me to the store to buy "two quarts" of milk. So I bought two 32oz quart cartons. Which apparently cost a small fortune. After his heart attack, dad sat me down for a long torturous lesson about pints, quarts, gallons, ounces, etc, etc.
view ohjodi's profile
Similarly, I had an epiphany when I learned/figured out that 1/4 cup is 4 TBS, thus 1 cup is 16 TBS.
This info is useful when scaling down a recipe and you end up with amounts like 3/8 cup, which is more difficult to measure than say, its equivalent, 1/4 c 2 TBS.
view Slow Lorus's profile
pich, actually the imperial system works better for cooking, the metric system is for distances. Recipes work better with well rounded imperial measurements, especially baking. Usually you start with a cup of flour as opposed to 1/5th liter, 1 tsp of an ingredient is 4.93 milliters. Thats why both systems stick around. and to make it more confusing a UK and a US Tablespoon are different, as are pints, cups, gallons, etc.
view funstraw's profile
Ok, I know this is an old post, but if anyone else checks it out, 2 things...
Ohjodi, I'm confused - 32oz is a quart, right? 8oz per cup, 4 cups per quart, 8x4=32. 2 quarts = 2 32oz cartons. Or did I miss something?
Also, the tablespoon gets even more confusing - in NZ, it's 3 (5ml) teaspoons to a tablespoon (15ml), whereas in Oz, it's 20ml (4 teaspoons). I have sets of both and recipe books from both countries (as well as the US and UK), so I do a lot of double-checking!
view mrlew1's profile