The two types of kitchen measurement
Volume says how much space an ingredient fills; weight says how heavy it is. US recipes mostly measure by volume, with cups and spoons, while recipes from most other countries weigh dry ingredients in grams. Liquids are measured by volume almost everywhere.
The two only meet through the ingredient. A cup of water and a cup of flour are the same volume but not the same weight, so a conversion between cups and grams always needs to know what is in the cup. Conversions inside one family, such as tablespoons to cups or ounces to grams, never do. The weight vs volume guide explains why.
US volume units and how they fit together
Each US kitchen volume unit is a whole number of the one below it: 3 teaspoons make a tablespoon, 16 tablespoons make a cup, 2 cups make a pint, 2 pints make a quart and 4 quarts make a gallon. The fluid ounce sits between the tablespoon and the cup: 2 tablespoons are 1 fluid ounce and 8 fluid ounces are 1 cup.
In metric terms a US teaspoon is 4.93 ml, a tablespoon 14.79 ml and a cup 236.59 ml. Kitchen tables, including NIST's, round these to 5 ml, 15 ml and 240 ml, which is close enough for cooking. Metric recipes use a 250 ml cup, so check which cup a recipe means before converting. The kitchen conversion chart has every step of the ladder in one printable table.
Weight units
An ounce of weight (avoirdupois) is exactly 28.349523125 grams and 16 ounces make a pound (453.59 g). A kilogram is 1,000 grams. These relationships are fixed by definition, so an ounces-to-grams conversion is the same for every ingredient.
The word "ounce" is the one trap: a fluid ounce measures volume and an ounce measures weight. A cup holds 8 fluid ounces of anything, but 8 ounces by weight is a cup only for water and liquids of similar density. When a recipe says "8 oz" of flour, it means weight.
Dry and liquid measuring cups
Dry measuring cups are filled to the brim and levelled with a straight edge, so each cup in a set holds exactly its marked amount. Liquid measuring cups are clear jugs with a spout and a gap above the top line; you fill them to the line and read it at eye level on a flat surface.
Both measure the same volume, so "dry measurement" does not mean a different cup size in US recipes. The difference is technique: levelling flour in a jug is awkward and liquid spills from a brim-full dry cup. For flour, the spoon-and-level method gives the lightest, most repeatable cup; a scale is better still.
Pinch, dash, dessert spoon and other loose measures
Some recipe words have no legal size. Clemson Cooperative Extension describes a dash as ¼ teaspoon or less and a pinch as ⅛ teaspoon or less, while Land O'Lakes defines a dash as less than ⅛ teaspoon. Treat both as "a very small amount" and adjust to taste.
A dessert spoon is a British and Commonwealth measure that is usually taken as 10 ml, or two metric teaspoons. It is not part of US or metric measuring-spoon sets, so measure 2 teaspoons when a recipe asks for one. For odd fractions such as ⅕ or ⅖ teaspoon, use the next spoon down and judge the rest, or weigh the ingredient if the recipe gives grams.
| Abbreviation | Means | Type |
|---|---|---|
| t, tsp | teaspoon | volume |
| T, Tbsp, tbsp | tablespoon | volume |
| c, C | cup | volume |
| fl oz | fluid ounce | volume |
| pt | pint | volume |
| qt | quart | volume |
| gal | gallon | volume |
| ml, l | millilitre, litre | volume |
| oz | ounce | weight |
| lb, # | pound | weight |
| g, gm; kg | gram; kilogram | weight |
| doz | dozen | count |
| pkg | package | count |
| tt | to taste | judgement |