Talk:Scott W's Couscous

Is the cheese supposed to be 2 cups before or after you cut it into cubes. There's a big difference in the packing fraction. Maybe specifying the cheese by weight would be better? Scott Nelson 15:18, 23 June 2008 (PDT)

It is 2 cups of cubes. The item says "2 cups cubed cheddar cheese" so I thought this was clear. It doesn't say 2 cups of cheese cut into cubes, which would be less specific. Weight would probably be better, but until I make the recipe again I won't know how much 2 cups of cubes weighs! :) Feel free to reword the ingredient list if you can make it less ambiguous. Also, I didn't specify the cube size, which makes a difference. I think I used around 1 cm x 1 cm x 1 cm, BUT all this is somewhat irrelevant because the recipe is pretty rough. Scott Webster 16:15, 23 June 2008 (PDT)

Ok. But I don't see how the cube size affects the packing fraction. Wouldn't the ratio of cheese to empty space be the same regardless of how big the cubes are? Scott Nelson 08:09, 24 June 2008 (PDT)

This is becoming some sort of interesting geometry problem :) I think you are right actually... my initial thought was that it would matter, because clearly _one_ cube with a volume of 2 cups would be more cheese than 2 cups of smaller cubes with air space included. However, it does seem that for any reasonable cube size that the cheese:air ratio would not necessarily change too much. This is not a rigorous proof :)