Us Cup to Uk Cup Measures

Asked by nathalie09. Answered on 11th March 2012

Full question

Hello there. I would like to make a recipe originating from North America. However, I am having trouble with their measurements. I have bought some measuring cups from the UK, but will they be any good for a US recipe? Many Thanks!

I live in Nigeria. I bought Nigella's book How To Be A Domestic Goddess when I travelled to Finland for the Xmas holiday but now I am home and I have been trying to bake ever since then but can't get the correct measurements. l'm used to grams and not cups. Please can you help me with cup measurements in grams? Thanks.

Do you have a metric conversion chart from grams to ounces?

Our answer

There is a very slight difference between UK/European/Australian cups and US cups. The UK cups are 250mls and US cups are 240mls, so UK half cups are 125mls whereas US half cups are 120mls (quarter cups tend to be the same at 60mls). However for most recipes the difference is small and won't affect the finished dish.

For baking you may prefer to remove 2 teaspoons from each cup measure to get from UK to US measures. One thing to try to look for in the US recipes is how the flour is measured as you do get very different measurements depending on whether the cup is filled by scooping the flour up into the cup or if the flour is spooned into the cup and then levelled. Quite often it will state somewhere which measure is used but if in doubt it is better to spoon the flour into the cup then level the top by sweeping across with a palette knife or thin bladed spatula.

Unfotunately as ingredients pack into cups differently there is no "standard" weight for each cup but we have in the past posted some common measurements (see link below). Also if you go to the Recipes section of Nigella's website you will find an "Equivalents and Conversions" button at the bottom of Nigella's recipes. This pulls up a table of common substitutes between the UK and the US, some weights per cup of common items and metric to imperial weight conversions.

http://www.nigella.com/kitchen-queries/view/3171