Recipe Unit Converter

A US cup is 236.588ml. That volume holds 125g of all-purpose flour, 200g of granulated sugar, 220g of packed brown sugar, 227g of butter or 340g of honey. So if a recipe says "1 cup" the gram weight could be anywhere from 85g (cocoa powder) to 340g (honey) depending on what you're measuring. Volume conversions that ignore the ingredient are the single biggest reason home bakes go wrong.

Take a basic Victoria sponge that calls for 2 cups of flour and 1 cup of sugar. Convert it as plain volume and you'd weigh out the same amount per cup. Convert it ingredient-aware and you get 250g flour and 200g sugar, the actual ratio the recipe was tested with. The ingredient-aware mode in this tool stores densities in grams per millilitre and applies them when you cross from volume to weight. For straight volume-to-volume (cups to ml) or weight-to-weight (oz to g) the ingredient doesn't matter, so the toggle stays off.

Most British kitchens have scales, jugs and tablespoons but no measuring cups. The fastest workflow: enter the cup amount, pick the ingredient, switch the output to grams. The tool returns the weight you can dial straight into your scales. For 1 cup of butter that's 227g; 1 cup of bread flour is 130g; 1 cup of cocoa is 85g. Round to the nearest 5g for everyday baking, the nearest gram for sourdough or macarons.

American "sticks" of butter are a separate quirk. One stick is half a cup, so 113g. Most US recipes will say "1 stick (½ cup) butter" but cookbooks from the 1970s sometimes drop the cup figure and assume you know. If you're scaling the recipe at the same time, do the conversion first and the scaling second so you're working in clean rounded numbers. The [recipe scaler](/recipe-scaler) handles ratios once you've translated the units.

Weight wins for baking. Flour packs differently depending on humidity, how the bag was stored and how heavily you scoop, so two cooks can put the same "1 cup" of flour in a bowl and end up with 110g vs 145g - a 30% swing in a recipe where the protein-to-water ratio matters. Weighing eliminates that. For bread, sourdough, macarons, choux and laminated dough, weight is non-negotiable.

Volume wins for liquids and small spice quantities. Measuring 2 tablespoons of olive oil on scales is more faff than the precision is worth, especially since liquid densities don't vary much. The professional rule of thumb: weigh anything dry, measure anything wet, and use a measuring spoon for anything under 15ml. The [grams to cups converter](/grams-to-cups) covers the reverse direction when a UK recipe lands in a US kitchen.

American "all-purpose flour" is closest to UK plain flour, not self-raising. American "powdered sugar" is UK icing sugar. "Heavy cream" is double cream. "Half-and-half" is a 50/50 milk-and-cream blend that has no UK equivalent (use single cream or 50/50 milk-and-double-cream). "Confectioners' sugar", "icing sugar" and "powdered sugar" all convert at 120g per cup.

Oven temperatures are a separate conversion: US Fahrenheit, UK Celsius, plus gas marks for older British recipes. 350°F is 180°C is gas mark 4, the workhorse temperature for most baking. The [oven temperature converter](/oven-temperature-converter) covers that crossover. For tin sizes, an American 9x13 inch baking pan is roughly a UK 23x33cm tin; the [cake tin converter](/cake-tin-converter) handles size adjustments when the pan you have isn't the pan the recipe wants.