Show me a recipe that uses cups for volumetric measurements and also has any mass measurements. They're rare.
Cups makes it either very old or very American, and from what I've seen American recipes tend not to measure anything by mass. (Even butter is measured by the 'sticks' that it's sold in there. They're obviously some standard weight, but if you're not American (and so did not buy your butter in a stick) you'll have to try to look that up.) And in a vicious circle, as I understand it most American home kitchens don't have scales?
Personally I think cups (or call it anything, doesn't matter) are nice when absolutely everything is going to be described in a volumetric ratio. That works nicely, it's easy to scale, and it doesn't matter at all what a 'cup' is, everything's just relative to everything else. But even then, especially with wet & dry ingredients, you probably want multiple 'cups' of the same size, it's not completely convenient.
Cups makes it either very old or very American, and from what I've seen American recipes tend not to measure anything by mass. (Even butter is measured by the 'sticks' that it's sold in there. They're obviously some standard weight, but if you're not American (and so did not buy your butter in a stick) you'll have to try to look that up.) And in a vicious circle, as I understand it most American home kitchens don't have scales?
Personally I think cups (or call it anything, doesn't matter) are nice when absolutely everything is going to be described in a volumetric ratio. That works nicely, it's easy to scale, and it doesn't matter at all what a 'cup' is, everything's just relative to everything else. But even then, especially with wet & dry ingredients, you probably want multiple 'cups' of the same size, it's not completely convenient.