kitchen measurement conversions (US to metric)

A blog reader suggested that I include metric measurements on my recipe blog  posts. I thought that was a good idea and then set about trying to find the metric equivalents for the US ingredient measurements I used. I thought it would be fairly straightforward, but a search gave me dozens of charts. Fine, except they don't all say the same thing! So now I'm confused.

On top of that, some charts list everything as ml but a few list only liquids as ml but dry ingredients in grams. What do metric recipes usually use? Is there a good standard conversion I can use?

Leigh Tate wrote:some charts list everything as ml but a few list only liquids as ml but dry ingredients in grams. What do metric recipes usually use? Is there a good standard conversion I can use?

Modern recipes will have liquids in ml and dry ingredients in grams. There's no really good conversion as far as I know as different substances weigh different amounts per 'cup', which is a unit not really used in Europe. Except by me because it really is far more convenient to measure out rice etc in a cup rather than dig the weighing scales out.

Years ago my husband bought me a glass with all sorts of measurements written on it because he thought it would be helpful. It isn't really, especially as it's in a mixture of English and French, which I don't speak. There are all sorts of things like sugar and cocoa and corn-starch and mostly they don't line up with each other. It's currently full of home-rendered lard, with a bit of stock on the bottom, from some pork scraps I managed to source from a big butcher shop because it's a useful way of seeing how much comes out of each batch, and whether or not it's all lard or if there's stock on the bottom I should extract somehow. But for cooking I'll either grab one of the measuring cups or, for something like soap which is more critical, I'll grab the digital scales.

For accurate conversions I think you might have to bite the bullet and weigh out a cup of each ingredients to see what the weight is in grams.

Cups and ml are easier - one cup is 236.559 ml. Or thereabouts.

My two sources are a measuring cup (much like Burra's) that has some cup measurements as well as ml measurements. I also use google for conversions like this. Just type "convert cups to grams" or "convert cups to ml" and it usually brings up their little calculator. I'm not sure how accurate now that you mention seeing so many conversion charts that are different. But then again, its jumping the volume vs weight. A pound of feathers looks different than a pound of lead.

Another suggestion rather than metric, way not use the weight measurement like a lot of recipes are now doing?

How did Kate use measurement in her book?  Metric or by weight?

I found this:

I'm thinking of including a little bit about measurements, so that everyone knows that the recipes use standard US cup and tablespoon measures of a 15ml tablespoon and 245ml cup.

https://permies.com/t/145422/posting#1143197

I also found these that might help:

https://www.allrecipes.com/article/how-to-convert-measurements-in-baking-recipes/

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/learn/ingredient-weight-chart

Burra Maluca wrote:Modern recipes will have liquids in ml and dry ingredients in grams. There's no really good conversion as far as I know as different substances weigh different amounts per 'cup', which is a unit not really used in Europe. Except by me because it really is far more convenient to measure out rice etc in a cup rather than dig the weighing scales out.

That's a helpful guideline. Do most European cooks weigh everything out? The weights of things vary so much. I know that a cup of whole wheat flour has a different weight than cake flour, but American recipes just tend to use the cup measurement anyway.

For accurate conversions I think you might have to bite the bullet and weigh out a cup of each ingredients to see what the weight is in grams.

Oh my. I tend to reduce everything to its simplest elements, so I can't see that happening!

Matt McSpadden wrote:My two sources are a measuring cup (much like Burra's) that has some cup measurements as well as ml measurements. I also use google for conversions like this. Just type "convert cups to grams" or "convert cups to ml" and it usually brings up their little calculator.

My glass liquid measuring cups have the same, so I know the technical conversion isn't a rounded number.

I have looked at the online calculators, but I'm hesitant to use decimal measurements in recipes. I couldn't see myself measuring out 137.6 grams of anything. Between that and the varying weights of substances, that's probably why the conversion charts are all so different.

Anne Miller wrote:Another suggestion rather than metric, way not use the weight measurement like a lot of recipes are now doing?

Then I'd have to decide on imperial or metric weights, lol!

As an aside, my great-grandmother's doughnut recipe calls for a quart of flour.

How did Kate use measurement in her book?  Metric or by weight?

I have both Kate's off-grid kitchen cookbook and her small batch cheesemaking books. She uses grams and millilitres with cup measurements in parenthesis. But interestingly, she uses teaspoons and tablespoons for smaller amounts. Maybe that's an Australian custom?

Leigh Tate wrote:Do most European cooks weigh everything out? The weights of things vary so much. I know that a cup of whole wheat flour has a different weight than cake flour, but American recipes just tend to use the cup measurement anyway.

Liquids in ml.
Very small amounts of dry stuff in teaspoons or tablespoons.
Larger amounts of dry stuff weighed in grams.

The whole concept of measuring is different. That's why it appears to vary so much.

I do remember that a lot of recipe books have two separate ingredients lists, one in metric and one in American, and there's usually an instruction somewhere to use either one or the other and not try to mix and match. Of course, this makes for a terrific extra amount of work for you.

I rarely use written recipes, but when I do I just grab the measuring cups if it's written out in cups, use the digital scale for grams, and click the conversion button on the scales if I need it in ounces. Unfortunately if you're attempting to write to an international audience they might insist on you doing all the work for them. Though in my experience, the more you do the more they will demand.

Burra Maluca wrote:The whole concept of measuring is different. That's why it appears to vary so much.

Now that's very interesting to me. I've been working on a cooking project/future blog series this year of the "cuisine of my ancestors." It's a way to combine my interests in genealogy, cooking, and culture. But I'm finding following traditional recipes of other nationalities somewhat challenging. It helps to understand that.

Liquids in ml.
Very small amounts of dry stuff in teaspoons or tablespoons.
Larger amounts of dry stuff weighed in grams.

And that's quite helpful. I think the main thing I need is consistency,

In the kitchen notes of Kate Downham's off-grid kitchen cookbook, she notates that cups are standard US 8 oz or 235 ml. Teaspoons and tablespoons are standard 5 and 15 ml.

Though in my experience, the more you do the more they will demand.

Unfortunately, that seems to be increasingly true these days. I am very happy to be helpful, but I think as far as I'm willing to go is to make a similar note as Kate's on my recipe index page, stick to a consistent set of alternative metric measurements, and let them work out something different if they want!

As a quick aside, in the UK as far as I know everyone still uses miles per gallon to describe the fuel efficiency of a vehicle. Whereas here in Portugal they use litres per 100 KM.

Which is at least one step too far for my poor old brain to be able to transition between...

Personally I don't like the weight version.  If I can find my scales, good luck getting them to work.

Long ago, I saw some testing on tv.  Accuracy and consistency of measuring by volume vs by weight.  Both repeated by the same person and consistency between people.  It was all purpose flour, stirred, sifted, no instruction, and later a comparison of all purpose flour from different parts of the english speaking world.

Weight was of course consistent, but surprisingly, volume (by people from areas used to using volume) was almost spot on to weight. Just as consistent.  Close enough it wouldn't make a difference to baking.

What was the biggest difference was flour from different places.  European flour is dramatically different than north american flour.  So cooking by weight from a north american recipe using European flour resulted in failure.  I found this too and needed to use strong or bread flour for my north american recipes.

My conclusion, take a recipe as a starting place and adjust to the local conditions...even if that means adjusting to the human.  

Perhaps instead of converting each recipe, a single blog entry on how and link to that with each recipe.  Teaching how fo fish instead of giving fish.

Also, for those in england, a north american cup is roughly based on a traditional porcelain tea cup, like the ones with a saucer.

My grandmother never converted to measuring cups and used her chipped tea cup, shery glass, teaspoon and cooking spoon.  It worked.  Apparently, in that part of england, well into the 1950s, schools taught that it's the ratio that's important when following a recipe.

One homework (for men and women) was to do fraction math and find objects in the kitchen that have the same ratios as cups, pints (these are old imperial/uk measures), teaspoon, etc.  One tablespoon is 3 teaspoons.  1 cup is 16 tablespoon.... the advanced class had to do the same again using usa measurments.  One cup would be 13.something uk teaspoons so, one us teaspoon would equal something fraction of a uk teaspoon....makes my head hurt thinking about it.

r ranson wrote:My conclusion, take a recipe as a starting place and adjust to the local conditions...even if that means adjusting to the human.  

This is a very good point. And it's the reason I rarely measure anything when I bake or cook. For example, I live in a very humid climate so that anytime I mix flour and liquid in a recipe I have to make adjustments. Humidity seems to affect how flour absorbs liquid.

Perhaps instead of converting each recipe, a single blog entry on how and link to that with each recipe.  Teaching how fo fish instead of giving fish.

This is probably the best idea. After doing the recipe requested, I thought, 'I've got better things to do.' But it gave me another layer of admiration for Kate and the work she did on her cookbooks.

I have an index for the recipes I share, so that is likely the best place to note conversion numbers. They can do the work if they want to.

Idle thought.  

I wonder if the permies hive mind would be interested in helping convert recipes?  It could bring more new users.

I’ve seen too many botched attempts at conversions published online (and sometimes even in books) and I don’t think it’s a good idea for a blog unless you’re prepared to put a fair bit of time into it. For a book, during the editing stages, it might be worthwhile though, as you can go through it all and make sure it’s consistent and works.

Conversions can be tricky because a US recipe might call for 3 cups of strawberries, but no one over here is going to want to know that that is 705ml of strawberries, because this is something we’d always measure in weight. There’s no easy rule for converting volume to weight, for example, a cup of water is 235g, so you can do 1:1 mls to grams for that, a cup of honey is 340g, a cup of whole wheat flour is around 130g.

For my cookbook, I went and weighed and measured in a US cup every ingredient, and then just multiplied/divided those original 1 cup measurements to get to the amount for each recipe.

In Australia, some recipes will be all grams (with tiny amounts of things being impossible to measure on an analogue scale, so I don’t use tiny measurements myself), some recipes all cups (but some people mean 235ml and others mean 250ml by a cup here, which gets confusing) and some recipes a mixture of cups and grams, depending on what is being measured.

It's more a problem of converting volume to weight.

People who bake by weight have trouble understanding when to stir the flour before measuring, when to sift, and how not to tamp it down when leveling the cup.  Weighing takes all that out of the equation.   And for those who were raised with measuring volume, all this is instinct...mostly.

...

And deep last night I got to wondering what different altitude makes.  I know cooking time and temp are big things. Adjusting for riseing agent is also important.   Are there other adjustments for measuring?

I miss that glorious time at the end of the last century when we could assume all recipes assume sea level unless specifically stated in the front pages.

Even still, I think most baking and cooking isn't as fussy as people worry.  Maybe my grandmother was right, it's the ratio that matters.

Hello,

Here in France, all dry ingredients are in grams, even for small amounts. So a recipe will call for 15g of baking soda. If someone says to use 1 teaspoon of baking soda, the person will get one of their coffee spoons, and fill it up so that they have a very steep hill over of the teaspoon. They'll have nothing at all similar to what was asked.

I've asked chatGPT to convert things for me before, but it has not been able to do the conversions correctly. I have pointed out errors to it and it has agreed that it wasn't correct. It is always learning so maybe one day it will understand enough about the different weights of different volunns, but it's not there yet.

I really like the suggestion of using proportions. We have the famous cake 4 fourths,  with 1/4 of flour, sugar, butter and eggs. Everyone everywhere can understand amounts when it's like that.

Cordially,

I use American, British, and European old and new recipes, from books and the internet.

I have a scale that I can set to grams or American and I just got a small gram scale.

What I do in my cookbooks, because I still think in American cups, etc. is annotate. What the grams = in American. How many (each) it took to get there. Unless it's canning or baking, I'm okay with rounding the numbers.

So, a recipe in grams might say "approx 3T" or a ml recipe might say " 1/2C, juice of about 1 large lemon."

I can convert the grams and other metric stuff. What drives me nutty is the "juice 2" or "3 average" because I don't know if what's small, medium, or large for me was the same when the recipe was written.

I would be very tempted to just write:
"Converting the measurements to metric is left as an exercise for the reader"

You recorded it how you are familiar and if someone wants to replicate that, they can spend a few minutes to convert the measurements.


Which is not too far from how I work (and treat the work of other): If you are not happy with my work, do it yourself.