Approximate measures

Lore & Background

Approximate measures include a wide range of units used in the United Kingdom, such as the glass-tumbler, breakfast-cup, tea-cup, wine-glass, table-spoon, dessert-spoon, tea-spoon, demijohn, goblet, pitcher, gyllot (about equal to 1/2 gill), noggin (1/4 pint), nipperkin (historically a fixed measure of 1/2 pint or sometimes 1/4 pint), and tumblerful (10 fl oz or 2 gills). Apothecaries' approximate measures include the teacupful (about 4 fl oz), wineglassful (about 2 fl oz), tablespoonful (about 1/2 fl oz), dessertspoonful (about 2 fl dr), teaspoonful (about 1 fl dr), and drop (about minim). Additional definitions vary, such as a teacupful of 5 fl oz or 1 gill, and a wineglassful of 2-1/2 fl oz or 1/2 gill.

Reader's Guide

In the United States, the vagueness of these measures is exemplified by the many sources that must be cross-referenced, including the United States Pharmacopoeia, U.S. FDA, NIST, and various manuals and guides. Dashes, pinches, and smidgens are traditionally very small amounts under a teaspoon, but not uniformly defined. In the early 2000s some companies sold measuring spoons defining a dash as 1⁄8 teaspoon, a pinch as 1⁄16 teaspoon, and a smidgen as 1⁄32 teaspoon, with two smidgens in a pinch and two pinches in a dash. These conflicting definitions highlight the persistent lack of standardization in approximate measures.

Did You Know?

• In the United Kingdom, a nipperkin is a fixed measure for liquor of 1/2 pint or sometimes 1/4 pint.
• A gyllot is about equal to 1/2 gill.

Defining the Undefined

Approximate measures occupy a peculiar space in the world of volumetric measurement. They are units that have never been formally defined by any government or government-sanctioned body, or alternatively, they were once officially defined but have since been repealed from the record. Despite this absence of authoritative backing, they continue to be used in everyday life, in kitchens, in apothecary practices, and in informal trade. The defining characteristic—and the central problem—of these units is that without an official definition anchoring them, their values drift. One person's teacupful is not necessarily another person's teacupful, and the same named measure can carry different numerical values depending on the source consulted. This inconsistency is not a bug in the system; it is the system. These measures exist in a grey zone between the precision of standardized units and the complete informality of a gesture, making them simultaneously useful and frustrating for anyone who needs to replicate a quantity reliably.

From the Egyptian Mouthful to Elizabethan Kitchens

A tantalizing possibility runs through the history of English-unit capacity measurements: that they all trace back to a single, humble origin—the mouthful. This roughly half-ounce quantity was recognized in ancient Egypt as the ro, the smallest unit in their formal system of capacity, which scaled upward through the hin, the hekat, and the khar. The mouthful was not merely an archaeological curiosity; it persisted as a practical unit of liquid measure well into the Elizabethan era, bridging millennia of human need to quantify a sip or a swallow. Whether this single origin truly underpins every approximate measure in the English tradition is a matter of speculation, but the idea captures something essential about how these units came to be. They were never born from a legislative act or a metrological commission. They grew organically from the human body's own proportions, from the volume a person could comfortably hold between lips, and from the practical needs of daily life that no government ever thought to regulate.

The British Panoply of Informal Vessels

The British tradition of approximate measures reads almost like an inventory of a medieval tavern. The list stretches from the glass-tumbler and the breakfast-cup to the wine-glass, the goblet, the pitcher, and the demijohn (also rendered as dame-jeanne). Among the more distinctive entries are the gyllot, roughly equivalent to half a gill; the noggin, fixed at a quarter pint; the nipperkin, a liquor measure capped at half a pint; and the tumblerful, which equals ten fluid ounces, two gills, or two teacupfuls. Apothecaries developed their own tier of approximate measures: a teacupful of about four fluid ounces, a wineglassful of about two, a tablespoonful of about half a fluid ounce, a dessertspoonful of about two fluid drams, a teaspooonful of about one fluid dram, and a drop approximating a minim. Yet even within this single tradition, values shift. One source places the teacupful at five fluid ounces or one gill, while another gives it at four. The wineglassful ranges from two to two-and-a-half fluid ounces depending on the reference.

American Ambiguity and the Quest for a Dash

In the United States, the problem of approximate measures is compounded by a tangle of sources that must be cross-referenced to arrive at even a roughly accurate picture. The relevant literature spans the United States Pharmacopoeia, the FDA, NIST, a Manual of Weights, Measures, and Specific Gravity, state board question-and-answer collections, MediCalc, MacKenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts, Approximate Practical Equivalents, and assorted websites and drink guides. At the smallest end of the scale, terms like dash, pinch, and smidgen have long resisted uniform definition. In the early 2000s, some manufacturers attempted to impose order by selling measuring spoons that fixed a dash at one-eighth teaspoon, a pinch at one-sixteenth, and a smidgen at one-thirty-second. Meanwhile, the legendary saloonkeeper Victor Bergeron, better known as Trader Vic, held that a dash of bitters equaled one-eighth teaspoon, but a dash of any other liquid meant a full quarter fluid ounce.