On 5/2/2010 4:13 PM, Geordie Guy wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've written a blog entry about American names for ingredients and what
> their rest-of-English-speaking-world equivalents are, it's at
> http://bit.ly/a8gIcv
>
> One American friend expressed surprise that she'd never heard any of
> these, instead saying that all the Australian English terms were
> commonplace. That's not accurate, but some might be more common than
> others. I'd be curious for people's comments about what is commonplace
> and what isn't, and any I might have missed.
>
> - G
For one thing we don't refer to the measurements we use as "Imperial"
but as "American Standard." I think the Canadians still use some
Imperial measurements where a quart is not a quart but a little larger, etc.

We don't spell chili con carne with two l's either, that translates as
chiles with meat. Most Americans call Chiles "peppers." But, that too is
a misnomer, there are different types of chiles and none of them are
pepper but that is the common name here. I think the chilli version came
from India orginally but am not sure.

I agree it would be easier to do the measurements in metric but somehow
we have resisted using the French measuring system that the rest of the
world uses even though our government adopted it a long time ago. They
just have trouble enforcing it, hence automobiles with both metric and
standard size screws, nuts, and bolts.

Ground meat covers a wide variety of grinds of meat, you have to live
here to understand that. Minced meat, in my opinion, is ground way too
fine to enjoy and I used to buy minced meat when I lived in the Middle
EAst. Unfortunately a lot of it there had cinnamon in it, never
understood why.

As to Australian versions of measurements, you just have to speak Strine
to understand it.

Other than that, you were fairly close.