American Measurement: Refining Cups and Spoons for Scientific Cooking in the Late 19th–Early 20th Century

Scientific cooking, which offered reliable results from standardized recipes, required exact measuring. The cup measure was a portion of an old official ale measure, but the teaspoon and tablespoon evolved from common cooking and eating utensils. Several versions of equivalents developed and were in use by the late 19th century. In 1915 the U.S. Bureau of Standards officially codified the amounts, but, as late as 1948, measuring utensils available for purchase were not necessarily accurate.