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I think I know the answer to this and realize that it is similar to this question about nuts, but I wanted to verify my instinct. When a recipe calls for 1 ½ cups cooked X, is that recipe calling for that ingredient measured before or after cooking?

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@Mien if you read my question you'll see that I referenced the question about nuts. I'm kind of an interloper here, so if you want to close the question by all means do so, but I felt like this provided a significant enough difference (cooked vs uncooked) to warrant the question. – ahsteele Mar 6 '12 at 0:03
I know you linked to that question, but in my opinion (and when seeing a lack of close votes, I guess I'm alone in this), the reasoning/answer/explanation is totally the same. – Mien Mar 6 '12 at 0:09
@Mien I see where you are coming from, including that in your original comment would have been helpful. Alone the comment looks like I didn't read your question, but did you see this one. :) – ahsteele Mar 6 '12 at 0:14
Yeah, I understand that. But the comment was made automatically. And you asked your question because you didn't know for sure the same reasoning applied. I can live with it ;) – Mien Mar 6 '12 at 9:43

1 Answer

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Recipe-speak is very particular about order.

  • half a cup of butter, melted means you measure the solid butter (probably with a butter ruler) and then melt it
  • half a cup of melted butter means you melt some larger amount of butter and then measure (probably with a liquid measure)

Obviously there's no difference between 3 carrots, roasted and 3 roasted carrots. Nor between 2 eggs, hardboiled and sliced and 2 hardboiled sliced eggs. And in many cases the volume of things isn't much affected by cooking. In some cases it is easier to measure before or afterwards, and the recipe-writer wants to point you in the easier way. But in some it really matters. Rice, for example. 1 cup of raw rice yields roughly 3 cups cooked, so recipe writers need to be super clear which you are measuring.

In your example, 1.5 cups cooked X, you cook it and then measure it.

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