It doesn’t take a genius to recognise that if there was no history behind the humble weighing scale then we’d have not retro kitchen scales, and worse still, we’d have nothing to discuss on this website! Perhaps some people might argue that’s a good thing, but fans of kitch kitchenware (!) won’t agree!
Imperial Days are Over
Fortunately the modern remakeshave been brought up to date with the latest high quality stainless steel and of course the fantastic invention that is metric measurements. As a relative youngster I’m afriad I know very little about pounds and ounces – grams and kilograms are the tools of my trade!
Except when it comes to weighing myself of course – where would we be without the trusted “Stone” in that instance!
US versus UK measuring
A curious point of interest that I only discovered when I began investigating this topic is that our friends over the other side of the Atlantic have traditionally measured cooking ingredients by volume. For those that don’t know the metric system is such that you can relate volume measurements to weight measurements.
For example, 1 litre of water weighs exactly 1kg.
Here in the UK we have always carried out measurements using weights and scales.
Historic Kitchen Scales
My mother actually always used a balance to measure out her flour and butter. On one side you places your container and on the other you placed a series of weights that corresponded to the desired recipe instructions. Once the two sides were in equilibrium you knew you could press on with your cake making!
Historically use of weighing scales goes back centuries. They were used to measure all kinds of commodities being traded by merchants across the globe. For example gold, silver and bronze amongst other things. It was also common to weigh out cultivated crops to ensure fair and accurate bartering.
These days many of us have digital scales in the kitchen, but this site is all about something else – the modern take on retro kitchen scales.
