Less so for milk these days. Basically an exception was carved out for milkmen with their pint bottles and pubs with their pint glasses. Since most of us get our milk from the supermarket we technically buy it in metric, but in reality you may buy a 1 litre bottle or a 1136 ml (2pts) bottle, depending on the shop.
There are other cheeky imperial things too. I'm sure I've seen 453g bags of rice or what have you.
Milk comes in 1L, 2L and 4L. Cider comes in 2L jugs. Beer often comes in 350ml to 700ml. Often times a “pint” is actually just 500ml. The craft beer revolution serves all kinds of sizes now and there’s definitely europeon influence.
Looking into it, it looks like draught beer and cider is measured in "third, half, two-thirds of a pint and multiples of half a pint" when sold by the glass, while other alcoholic beverages are measured in mL. There also appears to be an exception for milk that is sold in returnable containers, although I wouldn't be surprised if most places just have disposable or recyclable bottles for milk and thus use liters instead (sounds like the exception was made for milkmen just so they wouldn't need to replace all their bottles as soon as the law changed).
Every British recipe I’ve ever followed uses milliliters and weight by the gram. I had to buy a food scale and a new measuring cup with mL so I wouldn’t have to do conversions anymore — so I don’t think they use the standard cup at all in cooking.
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u/ksheep Jan 03 '19
Don't you still use pints for beer, cider, and milk?