Cooking Measurement Conversions: Cups, Grams, Ounces and Spoons

A recipe in cups when you have a kitchen scale, or in grams when you only have measuring cups — cooking conversions are a daily kitchen puzzle, with one important catch.

The catch: weight vs volume

Cups measure volume, grams measure weight — and they don't convert by a fixed factor because ingredients have different densities. One cup of flour (~120 g) weighs far less than one cup of sugar (~200 g) or honey (~340 g). This is why professional bakers prefer grams.

Handy fixed conversions

• 1 tablespoon = 3 teaspoons = ~15 ml
• 1 US cup = 16 tablespoons ≈ 240 ml
• 1 oz ≈ 28 g (weight); 1 fl oz ≈ 30 ml (volume)

Convert with ingredient awareness

Our free cooking measurement converter handles cups, grams, ounces, spoons and milliliters. For pure weight or volume, the weight converter and volume converter help.

Bottom line

Spoons and milliliters convert by fixed factors, but cups-to-grams depends on the ingredient's density — so flour and sugar aren't interchangeable by cup. For baking especially, weigh in grams; a converter bridges recipes written either way.