The Complete Cooking Measurement Guide: Cups, Tablespoons, Grams, Millilitres

Recipes travel badly. A cup of flour in Los Angeles weighs a different amount than a cup in London, a tablespoon in Sydney holds more than one in Chicago, and a “stick of butter” means nothing outside North America. This guide is the reference you wish came printed on the inside cover of every cookbook.

The four different cups

There isn’t one cup. There are four, and they’re close enough to confuse you but different enough to ruin a bake.

• US customary cup — 236.588 mL. The default in almost every American recipe. When a US cookbook says “1 cup,” this is what it means.
• US legal cup — 240 mL. Used on nutrition labels in the United States because it’s a round number. Slightly bigger than the customary cup.
• Metric cup — 250 mL. The standard in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and parts of Europe. Meaningfully bigger than a US cup.
• UK / Imperial cup — 284 mL. Rarely used in modern British recipes (they mostly went metric), but shows up in older cookbooks. About 20% bigger than a US cup.

For a savoury dish where 20% off matters less, you’ll get away with substituting. For baking — where the ratio of flour to fat to liquid is chemistry — the difference between 236 mL and 250 mL is enough to change texture. When in doubt, use the unit converter to bring the recipe into the system your measuring cups actually use.

Tablespoons, teaspoons, and the traps

The same story plays out at smaller scales:

• US tablespoon — 14.787 mL
• Metric tablespoon (most of the world) — 15 mL
• UK tablespoon — 17.758 mL
• Australian tablespoon — 20 mL (the odd one out — 33% bigger than US)

Teaspoons are more consistent — US, metric, and UK all agree on 5 mL. The Australian teaspoon is also 5 mL (thankfully). So if a recipe calls for teaspoons, you can trust the number regardless of origin.

Weight beats volume — always

Serious baking recipes give ingredients by weight, not volume. Here’s why:

A cup of flour weighs somewhere between 120 g and 160 g depending on how tightly it was packed, whether it was sifted, the humidity in your kitchen, and the exact type of flour. That’s a variance of ±15%. If your grandmother’s cookie recipe uses 3 cups of flour and yours doesn’t taste the same, this is probably why.

Weight has no such problem. 400 grams of flour is 400 grams no matter who measured it, in what humidity, from which bag. Every serious baking cookbook — Peter Reinhart, Rose Levy Beranbaum, all the classics — gives quantities in grams. Once you switch to weighing you don’t go back.

Reference weights per US cup

• All-purpose flour — 125 g (spooned and levelled) to 145 g (dipped and packed)
• Granulated sugar — 200 g
• Brown sugar (packed) — 220 g
• Powdered / icing sugar — 120 g
• Butter — 227 g (that’s two US sticks)
• Cocoa powder — 100 g
• Rolled oats — 90 g
• Chopped nuts — 120 g (roughly, depends on size)

Sticks of butter, packets of yeast, and other regional aliases

Some units aren’t on any scale — they’re packaging conventions:

• 1 stick of butter (US) = 113 g = ½ cup = 8 tablespoons. A pound of butter is 4 sticks.
• 1 packet of active dry yeast = 7 g = 2¼ teaspoons. Instant yeast comes the same.
• 1 knob of butter — English recipes. About 1 tablespoon. Vague on purpose.
• 1 pinch of salt — the amount you can hold between thumb and forefinger. Roughly ⅛ teaspoon. “A generous pinch” is ¼ teaspoon.

Liquid vs dry measurement

A liquid measuring cup (glass, with a spout) and a dry measuring cup (metal or plastic, filled to the rim) hold the same volume in theory. In practice they behave differently:

• Liquid cup — designed to be filled up to a marked line with room at the top. Fill it to the rim and you’ll spill on the way to the bowl.
• Dry cup — designed to be overfilled and levelled with a straight edge (a butter knife works). Fill it to a line and you’ll be short.

Using the wrong type introduces a ~10% error. For most cooking it doesn’t matter; for baking it does.

Oven temperatures across systems

• Fahrenheit vs Celsius — the standard conversion (°C × 9/5 + 32 = °F), or use the Universal Converter. Rough marker points: 350°F ≈ 175°C (moderate oven), 400°F ≈ 200°C (hot oven), 475°F ≈ 245°C (very hot).
• Gas marks (UK / Ireland) — gas mark 1 ≈ 140°C / 275°F. Each mark up is roughly 25°F. Gas mark 4 ≈ 180°C is the everyday-baking default.
• Fan-forced vs conventional — fan ovens run about 20°C (36°F) hotter than the setting suggests because the moving air transfers heat more efficiently. If a recipe was written for a conventional oven and you have a fan oven, drop the temperature by 20°C.

For quick number conversions between any two units, drop them into the Cooking Converter or the more general Unit Converter. Both run entirely in your browser and support every unit above.