As a baker, I am accustomed to precise recipe measurements. The difference between one and two teaspoons of baking soda in a cake can have significant impacts on the finished dish. Cooking, on the other hand, is generally more forgiving, although that is only true to a point. Having too much onion or lemon juice can alter the outcome of a recipe, even though the recipe doesn't specify a measurement.

It can be frustrating when the instructions call for "the juice of one lemon" or "one onion, diced" as though all lemons contain the same amount of juice or all onions are the same size. In one bag of onions I recently spied at the grocery store, one of the onions was nearly twice the size of the smallest in the bag. While it's easy to say that you can "taste as you go", that is not always practical, like in the case of sweating an onion and realizing halfway through that you need more. Other ingredients can be problematic too, including potatoes (how big is a 'large baking potato'?), shallots, leeks, all manner of citrus fruits, peppers, and so on.

So what is the solution? One is to ask recipe writers to use measurements instead of descriptions. Another is to keep track of average weights or volumes and use that as your guide, as the always amazing Nik Sharma does. He takes this issue seriously, recently tweeting a screenshot of a spreadsheet he uses to track ingredient measurements. Now that's dedication. For the record, the average output of a Eureka lemon according to the chart is 2.79 tablespoons.

Photo of Meyer lemon bitters from Serious Eats