When a recipe calls for X cooked amount of something is that before or after it has been cooked?

Question

I think I know the answer to this and realize that it is similar to this question about nuts, but I wanted to verify my instinct. When a recipe calls for 1 ½ cups cooked X, is that recipe calling for that ingredient measured before or after cooking?

Asked by ahsteele

Answer

Recipe-speak is very particular about order.

• half a cup of butter, melted means you measure the solid butter (probably with a butter ruler) and then melt it
• half a cup of melted butter means you melt some larger amount of butter and then measure (probably with a liquid measure)

Obviously there's no difference between 3 carrots, roasted and 3 roasted carrots. Nor between 2 eggs, hardboiled and sliced and 2 hardboiled sliced eggs. And in many cases the volume of things isn't much affected by cooking. In some cases it is easier to measure before or afterwards, and the recipe-writer wants to point you in the easier way. But in some it really matters. Rice, for example. 1 cup of raw rice yields roughly 3 cups cooked, so recipe writers need to be super clear which you are measuring.

In your example, 1.5 cups cooked X, you cook it and then measure it.

Answered by Kate Gregory

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