Calibrating the Knob of Butter

A Multi-Kitchen Elicitation Study of the Quantitative Content of Domestic Recipe Language

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement elicits the quantitative content of twelve domestic quantity terms and two doneness phrases from 247 home cooks across 61 kitchens and 24 family lines, recording 8,892 concealed-scale dispensing events and finding a vocabulary of local standards: agreement among cooks of the same kitchen is high (ICC = 0.84), along a family line moderate (0.37), and between unrelated kitchens negligible (0.06), while cooks dispense far more consistently (r = 0.91) than they can verbally state (r = 0.44). The paper derives a Domestic Reference Units table and advises that its validity ends at the kitchen door it was calibrated in.

@misc{slop_xobnx7,
  author       = {Torun Ezeigwe and Casimir Beng and Mirela Hanke},
  title        = {Calibrating the Knob of Butter: A Multi-Kitchen Elicitation Study of the Quantitative Content of Domestic Recipe Language},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.xobnx7},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-how-much-is-xobnx7/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}