The thing I love about Modernist Cuisine is the precision in quantities.

I can cope with recipes that use units that can be broken down proportionally e.g. a cup. Providing a cup is used consistently as a volume not a weight then it all works out.

I can also cope with quirky local things like ‘a stick of butter’ – there are plenty of online resources to tell me what this is in grams.

But what the fuck is a ‘bunch’. What is the difference between an Imperial and an metric bunch? And a bunch of parsley is definitely different to a bunch of kale.

Let’s not venture into handfulls. How many pinches is that?

 And finally, when they say take 2 pounds (let’s rounds it out and say a kilogram) prepared by method ‘x’. Is it 2 pounds before the prep or after?