Also ratio multiplications, e.g. when increasing the amounts of ingredients in recipes to match a particular amount of something.
So if the primary ingredient is chevre cheese, the recipe calls for 180 grams, but you can only buy it in 250 gram packages, you can set the slide rule to "180 over 250" and then just mechanically read off the proportionally correct amounts of all other ingredients.
Slide rules are indispensable in the kitchen to me and I'm surprised they're not part of standard kitchen equipment like e.g. scales.
Edit: Similarly, if the recipe is expressing ingredients in US units and you would want to know the international amounts, you can set the slide rule to the conversion ratio and again, mechanically read off the correct amounts as you go.
This is one advantage of the customary (English language non-metric) units: the common ones are full of rational factors (1/2, 2/3 etc) — it’s pretty easy to adjust a recipe to the number of people.
Comments
Also ratio multiplications, e.g. when increasing the amounts of ingredients in recipes to match a particular amount of something.
So if the primary ingredient is chevre cheese, the recipe calls for 180 grams, but you can only buy it in 250 gram packages, you can set the slide rule to "180 over 250" and then just mechanically read off the proportionally correct amounts of all other ingredients.
Slide rules are indispensable in the kitchen to me and I'm surprised they're not part of standard kitchen equipment like e.g. scales.
Edit: Similarly, if the recipe is expressing ingredients in US units and you would want to know the international amounts, you can set the slide rule to the conversion ratio and again, mechanically read off the correct amounts as you go.
This is one advantage of the customary (English language non-metric) units: the common ones are full of rational factors (1/2, 2/3 etc) — it’s pretty easy to adjust a recipe to the number of people.