UnitDial

Common Cooking Conversions

Volume & weight reference · Published August 5, 2026

Volume: cups, tablespoons & milliliters

Most US recipes measure liquids and dry ingredients by volume — cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons — while recipes from most other countries use milliliters and liters. Here's how the common sizes line up:

US measure	Tablespoons	Milliliters
1 teaspoon	⅓ tbsp	~4.9 mL
1 tablespoon	1 tbsp	~14.8 mL
¼ cup	4 tbsp	~59 mL
⅓ cup	5⅓ tbsp	~79 mL
½ cup	8 tbsp	~118 mL
1 cup	16 tbsp	~237 mL
1 US gallon	256 tbsp	~3.79 L

Weight: grams & ounces

For baking especially, weight is far more accurate than volume — a cup of flour can vary by 20% or more depending on how it's scooped and packed. Many bakers weigh dry ingredients on a kitchen scale for consistent results.

Ounces	Grams
1 oz	~28.3 g
4 oz (¼ lb)	~113 g
8 oz (½ lb)	~227 g
16 oz (1 lb)	~454 g

Note: a "fluid ounce" (volume) and a regular "ounce" (weight) are different units that happen to share a name — 1 fl oz of water weighs about 1 oz, but this doesn't hold for denser or lighter ingredients like honey or flour.

Oven temperature

Oven temperatures are one of the most common places US and metric recipes diverge. Here's a quick lookup for typical baking temperatures:

Fahrenheit	Celsius	Gas mark (UK)
300°F	150°C	2
325°F	163°C	3
350°F	177°C	4
375°F	190°C	5
400°F	200°C	6
425°F	218°C	7
450°F	232°C	8

A few practical tips

Weigh dry ingredients when precision matters. Flour, sugar, and cocoa powder pack differently depending on how they're scooped, which can throw off baking ratios — this matters most for bread, where our bread hydration guide covers exactly how much precision affects the dough.
Liquids are more forgiving to measure by volume since they don't compress or pack the way dry ingredients do.
US and UK "cups" and "pints" aren't identical — a US cup is about 237 mL, while some older UK recipes use a slightly different cup size. When in doubt, check whether a recipe specifies US or metric units.
Convection ovens often run hotter than their set temperature suggests — many recipes suggest lowering the temperature by about 20°F (about 10°C) or shortening cook time when using convection.

Convert your own amounts

For exact figures beyond this table — including cup-to-milliliter conversions for any US volume, or gram-to-ounce conversions for any weight — use the Imperial ⇄ Metric category on the UnitDial converter.