Cooking Unit Converter

Cooking conversions handle the volume measurements recipes live on: cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, and fluid ounces. These figures use US customary measurements.

• 1 cup = 16 tablespoons = 48 teaspoons = 236.588 ml = 8 fl oz
• 1 tablespoon = 3 teaspoons = 14.79 ml
• 1 teaspoon = 4.93 ml
• 1 fluid ounce = 29.57 ml
• 1 liter = 33.81 fl oz = 4.23 cups

Handy fractions:

• 1/4 cup = 4 tbsp = 59.1 ml
• 1/3 cup = 5.33 tbsp = 78.9 ml
• 1/2 cup = 8 tbsp = 118.3 ml
• 3/4 cup = 12 tbsp = 177.4 ml

The trap here is that “cup” isn’t one fixed size worldwide. A US cup is 236.6 ml, a metric cup (Australia and much of Europe) is a round 250 ml, and the old UK cup was different again. A recipe that just says “1 cup” without naming the system can be off by 5 percent or more, which is enough to matter in baking.

There’s also the dry-versus-liquid issue. A liquid measuring cup and a set of dry measuring cups hold the same volume, but you use them differently: liquids get poured to a line read at eye level, dry goods get spooned in and leveled off. And for dry ingredients, weight beats volume every time, since a “cup of flour” can swing 20 percent depending on how tightly it’s packed.