Let me cast a weak vote in favor of occasional imprecision. Some recipes defy absolute quantification and rely on feel. I'm thinking of a cauliflower gratin I make. If the cauli is very fresh it is so wet that the gratin is soupy, so I precook it to dry it out a bit. I suppose if I could test the density of the thing then I could give a precise recipe, but I can't; so I rely on feeling the heft of the cauliflower and prebaking as needed.