Recipe conversions: cups to grams, ounces, spoons and oven temperatures
Convert American, British and metric recipes: why cups to grams depends on the ingredient, US and UK pints, spoons, and oven temperatures in °C, °F and gas marks.
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Tools for this job: Volume Converter · Weight Converter · Temperature Converter
An American recipe asks for cups and Fahrenheit, a British one for grams and gas marks, an Australian one for a tablespoon that is not the same size as anyone else's. Most conversions are simple; the one people most want — cups to grams — depends on what is in the cup.
Volume: cups, spoons and pints
| Measure | Millilitres |
|---|---|
| US cup | about 237 |
| Metric cup (Australia, NZ, Canada) | 250 |
| US tablespoon | about 14.8 |
| Metric tablespoon | 15 (20 in Australia) |
| Teaspoon | about 5 |
| US pint | about 473 |
| UK pint | about 568 |
The differences are small for a single spoon and larger in a pint: a UK pint is about 20% bigger than a US pint. The Volume Converter lists US and imperial units separately so you do not mix them up.
Cups to grams: it depends on the ingredient
A cup measures volume; grams measure weight. A cup of flour weighs much less than a cup of sugar, so there is no single conversion. Typical figures for a US cup:
- Water or milk: about 240 g.
- Granulated sugar: about 200 g.
- All-purpose (plain) flour: about 120–130 g, spooned in and levelled.
- Butter: about 227 g — two American sticks of about 113 g.
Flour varies most: scooped straight from the bag and packed down, a cup can hold noticeably more. That is why bakers prefer weighing. A unit converter can turn cups into millilitres exactly, but turning millilitres into grams needs the density of the ingredient, so treat any cups-to-grams figure as an approximation and use the recipe author's own conversion when they give one.
Ounces: weight or volume?
An ounce in a list of dry ingredients is a weight: 28.35 g. A fluid ounce is a volume: about 29.6 ml in the US and 28.4 ml in the UK. For water the two are close; for honey or flour they are not. The Weight Converter handles ounces and pounds as weights; 1 lb is 16 oz, about 454 g.
Oven temperatures
| °F | °C | Gas mark |
|---|---|---|
| 275 | 140 | 1 |
| 300 | 150 | 2 |
| 325 | 170 | 3 |
| 350 | 180 | 4 |
| 375 | 190 | 5 |
| 400 | 200 | 6 |
| 425 | 220 | 7 |
| 450 | 230 | 8 |
These are the rounded equivalents printed in cookbooks; 350 °F is exactly 176.7 °C. For exact figures, the Temperature Converter shows Celsius, Fahrenheit and Kelvin together.
Fan ovens cook faster because the air moves. Many recipes suggest setting a fan oven about 20 °C lower than a conventional one — so 180 °C conventional becomes about 160 °C fan. Follow the recipe if it gives both.
Butter, eggs and other awkward units
- Butter in American recipes often comes in sticks or tablespoons. One US stick is 8 tablespoons, about 113 g or 4 oz.
- Eggs are graded differently in different countries — a “large” egg is not the same weight everywhere — so in recipes where precision matters, weigh them.
- “A stick”, “a knob”, “a pinch” and similar measures are approximate by nature; a pinch of salt is a small amount, roughly what you can hold between finger and thumb.
- Tins and packets come in different standard sizes in different countries. Check the weight or volume printed on the recipe's ingredient rather than the number of tins.
Converting a whole recipe
- Find out where the recipe comes from, so you know which cups, spoons and pints it means.
- Convert liquids by volume; they are reliable.
- For flour, sugar and butter, use weights where the author provides them, or the typical figures above.
- Convert the oven temperature, adjusting for a fan oven.
- Keep the proportions: if you round one ingredient, round the others the same way.
Scaling a recipe up or down
Multiply every ingredient by the same factor. Baking times do not scale the same way — a cake twice the size does not take twice as long, and a deeper tin cooks differently — so check for doneness rather than relying on the original time.