Cooking Measurement Converter
Recipes mix volume (cups, tbsp, tsp) and weight (g, oz) in ways a general unit converter doesn't handle well — pick a mode below.
How Cooking Measurement Converter Works
Recipe measurements come in two fundamentally different kinds -- volume (cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, milliliters) and weight (grams, ounces, pounds) -- and converting between the two isn't a fixed ratio, since it depends on the ingredient's density. This tool covers straightforward volume-to-volume and weight-to-weight conversions, plus a dedicated ingredient mode for the volume-to-weight conversions that actually matter in baking.
Formula & Method
Volume conversions use exact US customary definitions (1 US cup = 236.5882365 mL, 1 US tablespoon = 14.78676478125 mL, and so on) -- all routed through milliliters as a common unit. Weight conversions similarly route through grams (1 oz = 28.349523125 g, 1 lb = 453.59237 g). The ingredient mode uses commonly-cited grams-per-cup figures for a set of everyday baking ingredients (e.g., 125g per cup of all-purpose flour, 200g per cup of granulated sugar, spoon-and-level method) to convert directly between cups and grams for that specific ingredient, rather than relying on a generic volume-to-weight ratio that would be wrong for most foods.
Worked Example
1 cup of all-purpose flour converts to 125g in ingredient mode -- notably different from 1 cup of granulated sugar, which converts to 200g, even though both fill the same 236.59 mL cup, because sugar is denser and packs more tightly than flour.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Why can't I just convert cups to grams for any ingredient?
- Volume and weight are only convertible via density, and every ingredient has a different density -- a cup of feathers and a cup of lead take up the same volume but weigh very differently. That's exactly why this tool has a separate ingredient mode with per-ingredient gram-per-cup figures, instead of pretending one conversion factor works for everything.
- Why does the tool warn that Imperial and US measures differ?
- A US cup, tablespoon, and teaspoon are all slightly smaller than their Imperial (UK) counterparts of the same name -- a British or Australian recipe using "Imperial" measures (not metric) will give you a different actual quantity than this tool's US-based conversions, so it's worth checking which system a non-US recipe actually means.
- How accurate are the ingredient-specific gram weights?
- They're commonly-cited approximate values based on the spoon-and-level method (scoop, then level off with a straight edge) -- actual weight varies with how densely an ingredient is packed, which is especially significant for flour, where scooping directly from the bag rather than spooning it in can add meaningfully more weight per cup.
- Why do professional bakers weigh ingredients instead of using cups?
- Weight measurement removes the packing-density variability entirely -- 125g of flour is always 125g of flour regardless of how it settled in the cup, while "1 cup" of flour can vary by 10-20% between two people measuring the same flour. This is precisely why a kitchen scale is more accurate than volume measures for baking, where ratios matter more than in most cooking.
Uses exact US customary volume definitions. Imperial (UK) teaspoons/tablespoons/cups are slightly larger than US ones — if your recipe is British/Australian, check whether it means Imperial or metric measures.
These are commonly-cited approximate weights (spoon-and-level method) — actual weight varies with how densely an ingredient is packed or scooped, especially for flour. A kitchen scale is always more accurate than volume for baking, which is exactly why professional bakers weigh ingredients rather than measure them by cup.