US - Metric Cooking Measurement Conversions

Updated December 27, 2021 | Infoplease Staff

Some handy kitchen knowledge

Even if you have all the right measuring tools, a lot of people can have difficulty using the right cooking measurements. Our cheat sheet below shows measuring equivalents for teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, pints, fluid ounces, and more. This page also includes the conversions for metric and U.S. systems of measurement.

For more conversions, including Fahrenheit to Celsius temperature conversions, try out the Infoplease.com conversion calculator.

1 tablespoon (tbsp) = 3 teaspoons (tsp)
1/16 cup = 1 tablespoon
1/8 cup = 2 tablespoons
1/6 cup = 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons
1/4 cup = 4 tablespoons
1/3 cup = 5 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon
3/8 cup = 6 tablespoons
1/2 cup = 8 tablespoons
2/3 cup = 10 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons
3/4 cup = 12 tablespoons
   
1 cup = 48 teaspoons
1 cup = 16 tablespoons
8 fluid ounces (fl oz) = 1 cup
1 pint (pt) = 2 cups
1 quart (qt) = 2 pints
4 cups = 1 quart
1 gallon (gal) = 4 quarts
16 ounces (oz) = 1 pound (lb)
1 milliliter (ml) = 1 cubic centimeter (cc)
1 inch (in) = 2.54 centimeters (cm)
Source: United States Dept. of Agriculture (USDA).

Note: US cups are typically used as a kitchen measurement for both liquid ingredients and dry ingredients. Conversely, ounces are a weight measurement while fluid ounces are a volume measurement. To make things more confusing, although most recipes use cups for liquid measurements, most commercial products use fluid ounces.  

U.S. to Metric

One important thing to note with these cooking measurement conversions is that they directly translate imperial measurements to their metric counterparts. But, it's common in recipes using the metric system to use weight measurements for dry ingredients instead of volumetric ones. If you don't have a kitchen scale handy, you might have to be a bit clever with your measuring cups.

CAPACITY WEIGHT
1/5 teaspoon 1 milliliter 1 oz 28 grams
1 teaspoon 5 ml 1 pound 454 grams
1 tablespoon 15 ml    
1 fluid oz 30 ml    
1/5 cup 47 ml    
1 cup 237 ml    
2 cups (1 pint) 473 ml    
4 cups (1 quart) .95 liter    
4 quarts (1 gal.) 3.8 liters    

 

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Metric to U.S.

CAPACITY WEIGHT
1 milliliter 1/5 teaspoon 1 gram .035 ounce
5 ml 1 teaspoon 100 grams 3.5 ounces
15 ml 1 tablespoon 500 grams 1.10 pounds
100 ml 3.4 fluid oz 1 kilogram 2.205 pounds
= 35 ounces
240 ml 1 cup    
1 liter 34 fluid oz
= 4.2 cups
= 2.1 pints
= 1.06 quarts
= 0.26 gallon
   

 

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