How we convert

Sources checked: October 2026

Every number in Mixova's kitchen converters comes from public reference tables and a handful of fixed rules. They're all on this page, so you can check any figure yourself.

What a cup and a spoon hold

• US cup236.6 ml8 US fluid ounces; nutrition labels round it to 240 ml
• Metric cup250 mlUK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand
• Small cup200 mlJapan and Korea; the Turkish su bardağı
• Tablespoon14.8 ml1/16 of a US cup; a metric tablespoon is 15 ml, Australia's 20 ml
• Teaspoon4.9 ml1/48 of a US cup; a metric teaspoon is 5 ml

Where the weights come from

• USDA FoodData Central

  The US Department of Agriculture's food data. Its household measures — what 1 cup or 1 tablespoon of a food weighs — give our base weights for flour, sugar, rice, cocoa and other dry goods.

• FAO/INFOODS Density Database, version 2.0

  Density tables from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Liquids and fats — water, milk, cream, oil, honey — weigh by their density, the same in every kitchen, and we check them against it.

• NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8

  The exact size of the US cup, tablespoon and teaspoon in millilitres, from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.

How we measure

• –Flour, sugar, cocoa and other dry goods are spooned into the cup and levelled with a knife — the way most recipes are tested. Scooped straight from the bag, a cup of flour weighs 12–20% more; sifted, about 8% less.
• –Spoons are level, not heaped. A heaped spoon holds 1½ to 2 times as much.
• –Brown sugar is packed. Butter is 227 g a US cup, so a stick (½ cup) comes out at the 113 g printed on the wrapper.
• –Between cups, spoons and millilitres we convert by volume. Into grams, by what that measure of the ingredient weighs: a cup and a spoon pack differently, so where a kitchen table gives both, each gets its own weight.
• –A US cup means an American recipe, so it always gets American weights, whatever the language of the page.
• –Grams are rounded to whole numbers, with one decimal under 10 g. Page titles say ≈ because cup weights are averages: how you fill the cup moves them more than rounding does.

Cups and spoons in English-language recipes

• –American recipes mean the US cup and US spoons. Our English pages use them unless you pick another cup in the converter.
• –British, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand recipes mean a 250 ml cup: a cup of flour is about 132 g there, against 125 g in a US cup.
• –Australia's tablespoon is 20 ml — four teaspoons, not three. Our metric tablespoon is 15 ml, so for an Australian recipe count 1 tablespoon as 1⅓.
• –Most British recipes weigh dry ingredients in grams already; the converters are for cooking from an American book or blog.

Oven temperatures

• –°F = °C × 9/5 + 32, exactly. Oven dials step by 10 °C or 25 °F, so we also give the nearest step.
• –Fan (convection) ovens: 20 °C lower than a conventional oven.
• –Gas marks follow the usual UK chart: 180 °C is mark 4, 200 °C is mark 6. The French thermostat is 30 °C a step: 180 °C is Th 6.
• –Air fryers: about 15 °C (25 °F) lower than a conventional oven and about 20% less time. Check a few minutes early.

Spotted a number that looks wrong?

Tell us. We check it against the sources above and fix it — and the date at the top of this page moves when we do. Write to Mixova →