Cooking Conversions: Cups, Grams, Tbsp & mL

The short answer

Volume-to-volume conversions are exact: 1 cup is 16 tablespoons, 1 tablespoon is 15 ml, 1 teaspoon is 5 ml. Volume-to-weight conversions are ingredient-specific: water is about 236 g per cup, flour about 120 g, sugar about 200 g.

For liquids and spoons, use the Volume Converter; for anything weighed — flour, sugar, butter, chocolate — use the Weight Converter with your ingredient's grams-per-cup. When a bake matters, the scale beats every cup.

Convert in three steps

First, identify the conversion type: spoon-to-spoon and cup-to-ml are pure volume and always exact, while anything ending in grams needs the ingredient's density.

Second, run the numbers in the matching converter — Volume Converter for ml, cups, tablespoons and teaspoons; Weight Converter for grams, ounces and pounds.

Third, sanity-check against a known reference: a tablespoon of water is 15 g, a stick of butter is 113 g, a cup of honey is far heavier than a cup of flour. If your result defies the reference, recheck the ingredient, not the arithmetic.

The conversions worth memorizing

One US cup holds 16 tablespoons, 48 teaspoons, or about 237 ml. One tablespoon holds 3 teaspoons or 15 ml. One fluid ounce is 2 tablespoons or 30 ml. One stick of butter is half a cup, 8 tablespoons, or 113 grams.

For weights per US cup: water and milk around 236 g, granulated sugar around 200 g, all-purpose flour around 120–125 g, cocoa powder near 100 g, and butter 227 g. Treat flour numbers as ranges — packing changes everything.

Why flour differs from sugar

Grams measure mass and cups measure space, so air is the hidden variable. Flour aerates when sifted and compacts when scooped straight from the bag, which is why one cook's cup can outweigh another's by a fifth.

Sugar crystals pack consistently, butter is sold in standardized sticks, and liquids barely vary at all — which is exactly why experienced bakers weigh flour but happily measure milk. Convert the fussy ingredients by weight and the forgiving ones by volume.

Volume converter or weight converter?

Reach for the Volume Converter when both ends are volumetric: cups to milliliters for scaling drinks, tablespoons to teaspoons for halving dressings, liters to cups for stockpots.

Reach for the Weight Converter when grams, ounces or pounds appear on either side: flour cups to grams for bread, butter sticks to grams for pastry, chocolate ounces to grams for ganache. Mixed conversions — cups of flour to grams — start in volume, apply the ingredient factor, and finish in weight.

Kitchen device notes

On a phone propped in the kitchen, keep the converter open in the browser and lock rotation so splashes and floury taps don't lose your place. Volume math is one-handed friendly; weighing needs the scale on a level surface anyway.

On a tablet or laptop, open the recipe beside the converter and convert the whole ingredient list up front — mid-recipe arithmetic with wet hands is how tablespoons become teaspoons. A quick photo of the converted list survives spills better than any screen.