Units Conversion Folly

Yes....

http://www.engrish.com/category/instructions/

I always have trouble making links work, but www.engrish.com is well worth a few minutes.

Certainly some amusing stuff in there, but they do have the handicap of being written by folk whose first language (and maybe their 2^nd, 3^rd or 4^th language) isn't English.

The pie in question was made, packaged and sold in England. (_{But it does come from Southport, Merseyside, so maybe they've got an excuse} ).

P.S. Hope your posting blockage has been un-stuck.

Huh? These guys might be assuming a higher level of precision than is typically available (like what in hell is gas mark 6, and is it consistent anywhere, let alone everywhere?)

Big deal. I have successfully baked a cake in a wood-fired stove that must have varied from 250-450°F (~120-230°) over the course of cooking until a toothpick came out clean.

Of course, no one these days will write instructions like: Chuck into a moderately hot oven for 40±5 minutes until done. The Zen master cringes....

--Eugen I

... then again, Aga oven users don't have much option (from the User Manual):

i believe the target customer being American, 400°F is the main figure, and the computer converted it to 204°C. Should have rounded off to 200.

No common sense in computers you see. Come to think of it, not much in most people either

i have seen excel sheets projecting the next annual budget in millions of USD followed by cents to the second decimal. This was due to converting the original budget which was in tens of millions of rupees to dollars as per the official rate.

JohnDG,

I think you are over analyzing it. The (original) directions were likely done for the US where we still mainly use Fahrenheit (unless for technical stuff). Someone with a calculator figured out the conversion to Celsius and rounded to the nearest whole degree. Without really thinking about it, needless to say.

kvsridhar, Usbport - please see #3.

Actually, I thought about that since the term 'steak pie' in very foreign here. It may be that the manufacturer designed their product using a US-made oven.

_{"Merseyside." Heh.}

More likely the manufacturer's just stuck in the past - UK used Fahrenheit until the '70s - and is also (as kvsridhar suggests) somewhat challenged in the common-sense department.

Why are we still with our archaic system anyhow?

How do yo find 201.54 mm on a steel tape measure on a converted print?

I've found English and metric on the same prints as a common occurance.

People working with metric prints and English tape measures.

Are we really that isolated or is it just arrogant?

Just three meters of 3/4 inch pipe please.

As I have said before - we have been moving to the metric system inch by inch.

funny......but true

i can't recall where, but i seem to remember petrol (gas for you Americans) being sold by the Litre, but the car speedo/odometer was in MPH and Miles. Miles per Litre ? Huh.

i felt that we in India did the metrication bit much better, a clean break. Made me feel 10 feet (3.048 metres) tall

We have miles for road distance, MPH for speed, and litres at filling stations. You're right: "Huh".

i felt that we in India did the metrication bit much better,

lucky you, imperial system is so embedded or perceived embedded here, change is as AH stated.

Correction please: 'A good deed not praised holds behind it a thousand good deeds yet undone.' - Randouli

Also: 'No good deed goes unpunished.' - Clare Boothe Luce

Also: 'Nothing succeds like success' - Alexandre Dumas

Ad Infinitum

Yes. Imagine steel mill equipment bought from a foreign supplier, built to their metric standards ("metric" is not a universal standard by the way--in bolt threads you will find significant differences (at least for some bolts) between German metric "standard" and Japanese metric "standard").

But, back to: Imagine major steel mill equipment (an entire mill) bought from a foreign supplier, built to their metric standards, and installed in a US steel mill.

Then imagine the US customer asks for drawings to build spare / replacement parts, but asks that the metric measurements (including tolerances, some written, some implied) be converted to English / American units.

Now imagine when tight (interference) fits and such are off one piece in one direction of tolerance, the other in the other direction.

Fortunately, I was (one of the) electrical engineer(s). Not nearly the problems that the mechanical engineers had, or, at least mine were different. Imagine reading programs and program documentation with comments and variable names either in German or translated from German.... I guess that web site might call it Germ-rish. ;-0

John,

One of my earliest jobs was working for a major world appliance manufacture, specifically, designing and building oven controllers for domestic cooking. I am a co-owner of a patent on cooking algorithms and have many hours in the lab where cooks would be running DOEs for us (yes, we get to eat the experiment afterwards).

What most people do not understand is the the number of factors required for successful baking. For one, a steady state temperature is not what you want and you actually want a sizable swing at a specific period to cook best. There are many other factors, but a full discourse is beyond the scope of this discussion.

Basically, temperature regulation does not follow what you expect, so the variation you see is part of a much deeper story in the mystery of cooking.

204°C is essentially 400°F (400.444°F). So, that sounds like a conversion performed by the food company. Domestic ovens also vary from manufacture to manufacture, so the food industry pours many hours of work making products that work over a wide range of ovens, user abuse, and line conditions (yes, the wall power is a factor, too).

Use your oven. If the results are not satisfactory and you can't adjust your routine to serve, then drop me a line and I will suggest a better oven. ;-)

Having designed industrial ovens for the baking industry it also is the type of oven, convection cooks differently that radiant.

I'm currently constrained to living in a rented flat. It was rented 'unfurnished', but the white goods (fridge, freezer, cooker and washing machine) were provided (and are maintained) by the landlord.

These are the only measurements I've taken of an oven for which I've kept the data, and so are the only ones for which I can provide the results. From memory, previous results were similar or worse.

The cooker is a BEKO SC1521 (just about as cheap as they come). This is the oven temperature control:

(The dial doesn't actually stay at the 230 position - there's a detent which makes it either drop back to the previous 'graduation mark', or snap forward to the 'grill' setting).

I measured the temperature vs. time for settings of 150 ...

... and 200 ...

The measurements were a bit 'ad hoc', in that the initial conditions were not the same and the ambient temperature may have been a few degrees different, and I should have waited for a bit longer to get a proper 'turning point'. But the measurements were all made with a small bead thermocouple suspended in the centre of the oven, with the thermocouple and connected meter within calibration. (My watch has also been keeping pretty good time for the last 35 years).

Having said all that, I only did it out of curiosity. Folks have asked me to check their ovens in the past (which I've done, for a pint ), but I had a bit of spare time, so I thought "why not?".

Thanks for your kind offer, but I've cooked happily and successfully for the last 40-odd years using anything from a biscuit-tin and open fire to an Aga Rangemaster, a 'traditional' Aga or a Smeg (_{hee hee}).

Once again: 204°C? Meh!

Yeah - its' a joke - should be 204.5

Its even simpler than that, gas ovens in the UK did not use temperature per se, they used "Gas Mark". In this case "Gas Mark 6".

Look here:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_Mark

...and you will find:-

The Gas Mark is a temperature scale used on gas ovens and cookers in the United Kingdom, Ireland and some Commonwealth of Nations countries.

This is typical "metrication" folly - I see it all the time. The actual temperature specified is 400 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a reasonable specification for a domestic cooking appliance - one significant figure. But some drone, told it had to be labeled in Celsius, punched the numbers into a calculator and, not having the slightest idea of significant figures, wrote down all the numerals to the left of the decimal point. Now a perfectly reasonable specification in Fahrenheit has been translated into a ridiculous one in Celsius. A little sense would have resulted in rounding the Celsius value, but what do you expect from somebody who probably avoided math and science in school?

More like their idea of significant figures has to do with spring break on the Daytona beach.

Another we hear all the time is "16 Km from --- ". This is when a news story originates in the good ol US of A as "10 miles from-- ", which is taken to be an approximation, and then gets metricated. Once metricated it sounds more precise as it is down to the unit. It is similar for 100 miles/160 Km. If you buy a hydraulic press from that large manufacturer over in the East it gives a pressure gauge that goes to 35 tonnes/50 tons. I'm guessing that the 50 tons is the American 2000Lb ton but even then it seems over rated. ( Best i could get on the gauge is 25 tonnes ). Still, it gets sold as a 50 ton press.

If it smells good it's cooking. If it's smoking it's done!

Probably converted from Fahrenheit 400 degrees. Sort of like standard body temperature in Fahrenheit, 98.6 degrees converted from Centigrade 37 degrees, implies a lot more accuracy than it should. Precision shouldn't be confused with accuracy.

Am over zealous translation/conversion maybe!!!!

A possible way to do it more exactly is to buy one of those small free standing/hanging oven temperature gauges from a good kitchen untensil shop.

Or check it with one of those IR thermometer, they can be bought for $20.....

200°C would do it fine! But would not be exactly gas mark 6, which is 204°C.

Check here:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_Mark

Funny!!!

Well spotted and thanks for posting.

Then heat the steak pie in a 200°C oven for 35 x (204/200) minutes; i.e., 42 seconds extra. It's gotta be just right, ya know.