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They're also fantastic for small measures for baking and cooking when it matters.


Curious: What do you make where you need such accurate measurements?

I just eyeball everything when I cook. (For other things that I'm passionate about I'm much more careful.)


There's a few modernist cooking tricks that require small amounts - tenths of a gram - for big impacts. Sodium citrate can make any cheese melt beautifully into a smooth sauce, using something like 1% of the weight of the cheese.

Any juice can take the roll of lime or lemon (in cocktails or baking) by adding a bit of citric or malic acid. Orange juice is 1% citric acid, so add 3g citric and 2g malic per 100g juice and now you can make an orange daiquiri or "key" orange pie.

Emulsifiers get goopy if you use a lot, but can make a smooth syrup in small amounts. You can make a nice syrup from any nut milk with a small amount of xanthan and gum arabic.

There's a wide array of ingredients including xanthan and gum arabic used in tiny amounts in gluten free baking


I sometimes wish my scale was precise to below 1g when measuring yeast for long-rising (bread) dough. A recipe may ask for 1g, and adding 2g will make a huge difference.

Baking often rewards precision.

I'm also an eyeballer. I'm a decent cook but a truly lousy baker.


Somewhere there’s probably a coffee nerd who wants to measure small fractions of a bean.




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