not exactly so Beth. 2 cups of flour or 2 cups of milk. Each is 16 ounces, neither weighs a pound. In this case you are measuring volume, not weight. The confusion comes from both weight and volume being called ounces.
On this side of the big pond a cup is half a pint. 8 ounces can be either half a pint or half a pound depending if you are measuring the volume or the weight.
so a cup over there would be 8 fluid ounces, whereas if we used a similar system a cup would equal 10 fluid oz...
Exactly. Once you know what the ingredient is, you know how to measure it. Flour can be measured by weight or by volume, and the recipe typically specifies 8 oz of flour or 1 cup of flour. Since baking is more "measurement critical", if a cake recipe says 8 oz of flour you should weigh it for best results.
yes I realise, but I was pointing out that it would be 8oz there rather than the 10 oz here..if we used such a measurement , which we don't.. I do have a pyrex jug which has measurements of cups on one side, which is handy if ever I have to follow an American recipe
When I first spotted this thread I figured America had decided to go Metric. But no the US remains Imperial. I wonder why you have not made the step and are, inexplicably one of only three nations that has not gone metric. Australia converted to the metric system in 1966 with Decimal Currency ($A) and then distances and measurements from the mid 70s while the EU adopted metric in the 1990s. The UK uses a combined Imperial/Metric system. I was reading that post Revolution France first used metric in 1795.
A few product containers have gone metric like soda, but not all. Those that have probably sell internationally. Other than that, why bother. You still pay "X" amount per unit volume whatever that volume is.