Cooking Converter

How to use the Cooking Converter

1. Enter the amount from your recipe. Fractions such as 1 1/2 or ¾ work as well as decimals.
2. Choose the unit the recipe uses and the unit you want, for example cups to grams or grams to tablespoons.
3. Pick the ingredient, and switch to Metric cup and spoon sizes if your recipe comes from Australia, New Zealand, Canada or a modern UK book.
4. Read the result, the measuring-cup combination to use, and all six equivalents. Click any figure to copy it.

Features

• 24 everyday ingredients with typical densities
• Volume to weight and weight to volume
• US (236.6 mL) or metric (250 mL) cups and spoons
• Measuring-cup breakdown such as ¾ cup + 1 tbsp
• Understands fractions like 1 1/2 and ¾
• Table of 1 cup, 1 tbsp and 1 tsp in grams

Why cups and grams do not convert directly

A cup measures volume, the space an ingredient fills, while a gram measures weight. How much a cupful weighs depends on the ingredient’s density. A cup of water weighs about 237 g, a cup of granulated sugar about 200 g, and a cup of all-purpose flour only about 125 g, because flour is full of air. Any converter that gives one answer for “cups to grams” without asking what you are measuring is guessing.

How this converter works

Each ingredient has a typical weight per US cup, based on standard nutrition reference values for ingredients spooned into the cup and leveled with a knife. The converter turns your amount into grams through that density and then into the unit you asked for. Volume-to-volume and weight-to-weight conversions do not need a density, so the ingredient does not affect them.

The biggest source of error in home baking is how the cup is filled. Scooping flour straight from the bag packs it down so the same cup holds noticeably more, which is a common reason for dry cakes and tough cookies. Brown sugar is the opposite: recipes expect it packed firmly, and the value here assumes that.

Cup and spoon sizes around the world

• US customary: 1 cup = 236.6 mL, 1 tablespoon = 14.8 mL, 1 teaspoon = 4.9 mL. Nutrition labels round the cup to 240 mL.
• Metric: 1 cup = 250 mL, 1 tablespoon = 15 mL, 1 teaspoon = 5 mL, used in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many newer UK recipes.
• Australian tablespoon: 20 mL, or four teaspoons. If an Australian recipe asks for tablespoons, multiply the metric-mode result by 4/3.
• US stick of butter: ½ cup, 8 tablespoons, 4 oz or about 113 g.

Worked examples

2 cups of all-purpose flour: 2 × 125 g = 250 g.

200 g of granulated sugar in cups: 200 ÷ 200 g per cup = 1 cup.

100 g of butter in tablespoons: a tablespoon of butter weighs about 14.2 g, so 100 ÷ 14.2 = about 7 tablespoons.

1 teaspoon of table salt: about 6 g, while a teaspoon of baking powder is about 4 g.

Typical weights per US cup

Tips for accurate measuring

A digital kitchen scale is the most reliable tool: put the bowl on, press tare to zero it, and add each ingredient by weight. Without a scale, fluff flour, spoon it into the cup and level it off. Read liquids at eye level in a clear jug. Lightly oil the cup before measuring honey or syrup so it slides out completely. To scale a whole recipe up or down, the Fraction Calculator handles awkward amounts, and the Temperature Converter sorts out oven settings.

Frequently asked questions