Pennyweight Pennyweight A pennyweight (abbreviated dwt, from denarius weight) is a unit of mass that is equal to 24 grains, of a troy ounce, of a troy pound, approximately 0.054857 avoirdupois ounce and exactly 1.55517384 grams. In the Middle Ages, a British penny's weight was literally, as well as monetarily, of an ounce and of a pound of sterling silver. At that time, the pound in use was the Tower pound, equal to 7,680 Tower grains (also known as wheat grains). The medieval English pennyweight was thus equal to 32 Tower grains. When Troy weights replaced Tower weights in 1527, the
Five Grains as in the Min Nan custom of creating a Taoist stove to cook "Chui Zhao Fan", a meal for the Kitchen God in which five dry seeds are placed into a slot in the chimney of the stove. Casual worshippers may simply use any five beans (e.g., of different colors) instead of any particular set of grains. Chinese cuisine is not known for any single recipe using all five grains, so there is no grain equivalent of five-spice powder or "eight treasure rice" (八寶飯, "babaofan"). Many, perhaps most, Chinese cooking employs the grains in some fashion, though: rice, congee, noodles,