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Boing Boing

Keep a slide rule in your kitchen drawer for scaling recipes

Ellsworth Toohey
Jan 15, 2026
∙ Paid

Slide rule (ReiKilb/shutterstock.com)

Forget apps and smart displays. The most elegant kitchen calculator is a mechanical device from the 1600s. Entropic Thoughts makes the case for keeping a slide rule in your kitchen drawer.

The problem: cooking constantly demands proportion adjustments. You have 2 cups of flour, but the recipe calls for 3.3. How much o…

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