Why is the butter given in cup measure when you have to melt it to do this? Why not just a weight measure? Thank you> Tha?

All of that aside, I have made this recipe MANY times, and it is wonderful!

I can't easily find data on percentage of American households that have kitchen scales, but most articles say most households don't have them.
They are used mostly by professional cooks, recipe writers and (odd bit of information) drug dealers.
Probably the custom of volume measurement came first, and absence of kitchen scales second, but it now may be a chicken-and-egg question.

While my volume vs. mass rant is valid, it should be pointed out that using volumetric measures for butter is commonplace in the USA.

While regular supermarket butter in the USA is sold by weight, the sticks in a 1-pound box of butter are labelled with volume measurements. A normal stick is 8 tablespoons or 1/2 cup of butter so you don't have to melt it to figure out this volume. It says so right on the wrapper.

Unfortunately volume-based Imperial measurements are typical for American recipes, especially in home cooking.

Mass-based metric measurements are preferred by sane people -- like most of the rest of the world.

And mass-based measurements are more efficient time wise. You put a saucepan on a scale, press tare and dump in the butter until you reach the target amount. Got another ingredient? Press tare again and add. Something like a half-cup of honey is an insanely stupid quantity and a complete waste of time.

Stella Parks -- a.k.a. BraveTart of Serious Eats fame -- has a rant about this in her cookbook using flour as an example. Measuring flour using Imperial volume is spoon-and-level or scoop-and-level. Either way is inconsistent based on who is spooning, scooping, or leveling. What is a pound of flour? 3.25 cups? A little more? A little less? Fill, level, empty, repeat at least twice. Metric? Put mixing bowl on scale, press tare and dump out 454 grams, takes five seconds, done.

Anyhow, I end up converting any Imperial volume based baking recipes to metric mass measurements so I never have to deal with it again for that particular preparation. I just pencil them into the cookbook or take notes.

Metric's inherent simplicity is also evident when you need to scale quantities up and down.

Anyhow, the author of this recipe decided to use Imperial volumetric measurements. Most recipes on this site were contributed by community members and it is each author's call what sort of measurement system they choose to use.