Kitchen Atlas

Cups to grams

Choose the ingredient, type how much you have, and read the answer. It works the other way round too. Nothing to sign up for, and nothing is stored.

1. Choose the ingredient

Not on the list? The full converter has more, and can do a whole recipe at once.

2. How much do you have?
That comes to

These are planning calculators, not recipes. Ingredient weights, tin volumes and fermentation times are close approximations that vary with brand, humidity, altitude and how firmly things are packed. Where a recipe gives its own figures, follow the recipe. Food safety, allergens and cooking temperatures are your responsibility.
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Why a cup of one thing weighs more than a cup of another

A cup measures space, not weight. It tells you how much room an ingredient takes up, and different ingredients pack into that room very differently.

Flour is light and full of air, so a cup of it weighs about 120 grams. Granulated sugar is denser and settles into the gaps, so the same cup holds about 200 grams. Honey is heavier still — about 340 grams. Same cup, nearly three times the weight.

That is the whole reason a recipe written in grams is easier to get right than one written in cups. Grams do not depend on how you filled the cup.

The two mistakes worth knowing about

Scooping flour instead of spooning it

If you push the measuring cup down into the bag, the flour compresses and you can end up with 20 to 30 grams more than the recipe intended. Over three cups that is most of an extra cup of flour, which is enough to turn a tender cake dry.

The gentler way: stir the flour in the bag to loosen it, spoon it into the cup without pressing, and level the top off with the back of a knife. That is what the 120 grams on this page assumes.

Swapping one kosher salt for another

This one catches out experienced cooks. A cup of Diamond Crystal kosher salt weighs about 142 grams. A cup of Morton kosher salt weighs about 241 grams — the crystals are denser, so more of them fit. Measured by volume, one is nearly twice as salty as the other. Both are on the list above for exactly that reason.

A note on cup sizes

This page uses the US cup, which is about 237 millilitres. If you are cooking from an Australian or New Zealand recipe, a metric cup there is 250 millilitres. Older British recipes sometimes mean an imperial cup of about 284 millilitres. The difference is small on one cup and noticeable across four.

Print this and put it in a drawer

If you would rather not come back here every time, print the chart below. It covers the ingredients people look up most often, and it will not change.

Weight of one US cup, and of one level tablespoon.
Ingredient1 cup1 tbsp

Weights are the commonly used values for level, spooned measures at room temperature. Ingredients vary a little by brand, humidity and how firmly they are packed, so treat these as close rather than exact. Where a recipe gives grams, follow the recipe.
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