What's The Difference: Fahrenheit Vs. Celsius

It’s almost always a sure thing that when you read a recipe that you need to bake, you’ll need to know what temperature the oven needs to be set to.

This is sometimes a troubling issue because some recipes simply do not state the right temperature that you are familiar with. For those baking recipes that have oven temperatures set at Fahrenheit instead of Celsius, it can be confusing to try to wonder what temperature this is.

This isn’t wrong. It’s just different because not all countries converted to use Celsius as their temperature measurement.

Fahrenheit is an imperial measurement while Celsius is metric.

Until 1965, the majority of the world used the imperial system of measurement. It was discovered that the metric system was the more consistent method of measurement and this meant, for international trade, a universal system could be applied to all trade products.

The United States of America (USA) however didn’t make the switch. It couldn’t pass laws to change its system of measurement from the existing ones. (These laws were allegedly being blocked by big businesses who didn’t want to exert time, effort, and money to change its measuring infrastructure.) The Philippines adopted the metric system in 1906 to standardize local terms for weight such as kaban and ganta (75 liters and 3 liters respectively) and other native measurements into a system that was more consistent. This applied to all products being sold on the market.

Some countries still use Fahrenheit and if you happen to be reading a recipe that uses it, you simply need to know how to convert from one measurement to another. You just need to do a little math. Here are the two formulas you need to do it:

(Fahrenheit – 32) x 5/9 = Celsius

(Celsius x 9/5) + 32 = Fahrenheit

The problem with this is that it’s not always a round number that you come up with. Just imagine how hard it would be to set your oven to 176.66 degrees. That’s why it’s common to see temperatures rounded up or down accordingly.

Not a math whiz? To help you convert without getting a headache, use this handy oven temperature conversion chart for recipes that use either Fahrenheit or Celsius: