Cheezz's question up in 15971 got me thinking...how big is big? how medium is medium? and

M

maycee

Well-known member
how small is small?

When a recipe calls for a medium onion...what is medium? They come in all sizes from golfball size yellow to softball size Spanish.

What about eggplant? One store's eggplants are all the same size...gianormous. Another store has a variety of purple eggplant, plus Japanese, Italian, white.

Is there a chart somewhere that gives a weight of small, medium and large? Or volume? One small onion chopped = 1/4 cup? 1/2 cup?

 
That's true. I have seen some recipes that say "one medium onion, chopped or 1/2 cup, chopped", but

not too often. I guess it isn't critical for the taste or something.

 
It is a problem. There used to be a "rule" in recipe editing that you didn't say "medium". Medium

was assumed to be average, and the shopper was assumed to buy an average-size whatever unless told to use a large or a small. But you're right -- life was simpler then, and we didn't have fifteen sizes of yellow onion. (Or did we, but cooks knew how much was needed?)

I sometimes use the charts in Joy and Clairborne's New York Times Cook Book. The latter tells you a medium onion yields 1/2 to 3/4 cup chopped, but neither tells you the size of a large pineapple. The linked chart, which I think was posted here once, says a medium pineapple is 2 lb.

http://southernfood.about.com/library/info/blequiv.htm

 
Once I make a recipe, I always measure and put the measured amount in their instead of 'lg', 'med'..

 
I never worry about that...if you are an experienced cook, just grab a medium onion

it is smaller than the largest onion you have and bigger than the smaller onion you have. Since I buy different sizes at the Farmer's Market, it makes it easier. Just judge the recipe amount. If you recipe is feeding four people, two cups of onion, might be too much.

 
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