Kitchen Conversion Chart

How to use it

1. Turn off what you will never look at. Most people want four of the eight sections. A chart with everything on it is a chart you stop reading, which is why the printable you downloaded last time is still in a drawer.
2. Set the cup before anything else. If your recipes come from an American site, leave it on the US cup. If they come from an Australian or British book, change it, because the numbers on every other row change with it.
3. Pick how many ingredients you want. Fourteen fits comfortably beside the other sections. All 122 turns the sheet into a multi-page reference, which is worth doing once and keeping in a binder.
4. Choose Letter or A4. The PDF is laid out for the paper you pick, not scaled down from the other one at print time.
5. Download, print, laminate. Inside a cabinet door at eye level is the right place. On the fridge it gets covered.

Why this chart is different

Search this and you will get a gallery of pictures. Almost every kitchen conversion chart in circulation is a fixed image: somebody else's choice of rows, in somebody else's cup, with no indication of where any of the numbers came from. If it does not have what you need, there is nothing you can do about it except find another picture.

• You build it. Eight sections, on or off. The preview above is the artifact, so what you see is what comes out of the printer.
• The cup is a setting. US customary, US legal, metric, imperial or Japanese, and each one carries its own tablespoon. Set it to metric and a cup becomes 12.5 tablespoons, because an Australian tablespoon is 20 ml and not 15. Every printable on the first page of Google is built on the US cup, whoever is reading it.
• It says which numbers are conversions and which are conventions. Gas mark 4 is 350 F by definition, and 350 F is 176.7 C. Every chart prints 180 C, because that is the marking on the dial. Both belong on the sheet, labelled, and no other chart on the first page carries both.
• Ingredient weights come with a source attached. Each row says whether it is King Arthur's measured chart or a USDA portion weight. Charts that print a single number for "1 cup dry ingredients" are quoting flour at you and calling it a rule.
• The pan table leads with area. A 9-inch round and an 8-inch square are within one percent of each other, and an 8-inch round holds a fifth less than either, which is why the cake that worked last time came out flat. Volume is on there too, honestly labelled as brim-full geometry.
• The maths is tested on every build. Eleven thousand assertions: the NIST definitions reproduce exactly, every gas mark converts both ways, the pan swap ratios hold in all five cup standards, and all 3,825 reachable chart states are swept for a value that could render as NaN. If any of it drifts, the site does not deploy.

How it works (the math)

Most of this chart is definition rather than calculation. That is worth saying plainly, because it is the reason two charts can disagree and exactly one of them can be right.

1 US gallon   = 231 cubic inches   (exact)
1 cup         = gallon / 16        = 236.5882365 ml
1 fl oz       = cup / 8            1 tbsp = fl oz / 2      1 tsp = tbsp / 3
1 oz          = 28.349523125 g     1 lb   = 453.59237 g    (exact)
1 inch        = 2.54 cm            (exact)
C             = (F - 32) x 5/9
gas mark n    = 275 F + 25 F x (n - 1)
pan area      = pi x r^2  or  l x w        swap factor = area / area of a 9 x 13

The volume ladder. A US cup is exactly 236.5882365 ml, because a gallon is defined as 231 cubic inches and an inch has been exactly 2.54 cm since 1959. Everything below the cup divides down from there, which is why 16 tablespoons make a cup and 3 teaspoons make a tablespoon, everywhere, forever. Change the cup standard and the ratios change with it: a 250 ml metric cup against a 20 ml metric tablespoon gives 12.5, and a chart that changes the cup while leaving the tablespoon at 15 ml is quietly wrong on every row.

The oven table, and the thing every other chart hides. The gas mark scale is defined in Fahrenheit: gas 1 is 275 F and each mark adds 25 F, up to gas 9 at 475 F. Convert gas 4 honestly and you get 176.7 C. No oven in Europe has a 176.7 marking, so charts print 180 C, and after enough repetition people believe 350 F equals 180 C. It does not; it equals 176.7 C and 180 is the nearest thing you can set. The difference is small enough not to matter for a casserole and large enough to matter for caramel, so this chart prints both columns and labels which is which. Fan and convection ovens get the standard 20 C reduction off the dial figure.

Butter, where the package is a legal weight. King Arthur publishes 226 g for a cup of butter. The definition of a US stick is a quarter pound, which makes four sticks exactly 453.59 g and a cup exactly 226.8 g. For flour a published average is the best available number, because nobody's scoop is the same. For butter the package is weighed and stamped, so this chart uses the definition and gets four sticks to land on the pound.

Pans, and why area beats volume. Volume is what charts print and area is what decides your bake. Pour one batch of batter into a 9-inch round and it sits deeper than the same batch in an 8-inch square, so it bakes slower in the middle and the edges go first. Area ratio is exact arithmetic and tells you directly: a 9-inch round is 54 percent of a 9 by 13, an 8-inch square is 55 percent, which is why those two swap for each other without anyone thinking about it. The volume column is brim-full geometry, and a real pan holds a little less because the walls slope. It is labelled that way on the sheet rather than presented as capacity.

Limitation. The ingredient section is the one part of this chart that is averages rather than definitions. A published cup weight is a typical bag of a typical ingredient, and flour in a humid August kitchen is not that. If a recipe is worth repeating, weigh it.

Three worked examples

A British recipe says gas mark 6 and 200 C

Both are the same instruction. Gas 6 is 400 F by definition, which converts to 204.4 C, and 200 C is the dial marking the book is telling you to use. Set an American oven to 400 F and you have matched it. If the book says fan, take the Celsius dial figure down 20 and you are at 180 C, which is 350 F. The one thing not worth doing is splitting the difference: pick the column that matches the oven in front of you.

The recipe wants a 9 by 13 and you own two 9-inch rounds

A 9 by 13 is 117 square inches. A 9-inch round is 63.6, so two of them are 127 square inches, about 9 percent more surface. That is a good swap: the batter sits slightly shallower, so start checking five to ten minutes early. One 9-inch round on its own is 54 percent of the pan the recipe wanted, so a full batch of batter climbs the sides and goes over. Straight-sided pans are the ones this arithmetic is honest about, which is what our food processor guide assumes when it talks about batch sizes for pastry.

An Australian recipe asks for two tablespoons of baking powder

An Australian tablespoon is 20 ml. Two of them are 40 ml, and two American tablespoons are 29.6 ml, so measuring it the American way leaves you a third short of the leavening. Switch the chart to metric before you print and the whole sheet moves with it, including what a cup of each ingredient weighs. This is the failure that convinces people they cannot bake, when the arithmetic was fine and the spoon was a different object. Rice is the other place this bites, because the cup in the rice cooker box is a Japanese 180 ml gō and not a cup at all; our rice cooker guide covers which machines label the bowl clearly, and you will want a colander for the rinse either way.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most common kitchen conversions?

The six worth memorising: 3 teaspoons make a tablespoon, 16 tablespoons make a cup, 8 fluid ounces make a cup, 2 cups make a pint, 4 cups make a quart, and 16 ounces make a pound. Everything else on a conversion chart is a lookup. Note that fluid ounces and ounces are different measurements that share a word: a cup is 8 fluid ounces of volume, but a cup of flour weighs about 4.2 ounces and a cup of honey weighs about 12.

How many tablespoons are in a third of a cup?

5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon, in the US cup. A third of a cup is 16 teaspoons exactly, which does not divide evenly into tablespoons, which is why every set of measuring cups includes a third and why the answer feels awkward. Two thirds is 10 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons. The cup fractions section prints the whole ladder so you never have to work it out at the counter.

Is 350 F the same as 180 C?

Not exactly, and the gap is worth knowing. 350 F is 176.7 C. Ovens outside the US are marked in 10-degree steps, so 180 C is the setting everyone uses and every chart prints. For bread, roasts and casseroles the three-degree difference is irrelevant. For sugar work, custards and anything with a narrow window it is not. Both numbers are on this chart, labelled, which is the part other charts leave out.

How do I convert a recipe to metric?

Convert the weights, not the cups. A cup is a volume, and a cup of one thing weighs nothing like a cup of another, so a chart that says "1 cup = 240 g" is telling you about water and nothing else. Set this chart's cup standard to metric, print the ingredient weights section, and look up what you are actually measuring: flour is 120 g a cup, sugar is 198 g, oats are 89 g. Our grams to cups converter does the same job for one ingredient at a time, including the difference between spooning flour in and dipping the cup into the bag.

Why does one chart say a cup of flour is 120 g and another says 142 g?

Because they are describing two different habits and neither says so. King Arthur publishes 120 g for flour spooned into the cup and levelled off. America's Test Kitchen publishes 142 g for the same cup dipped into the bag and swept, which packs it. The gap is 18 percent, which is most of a fifth of a cup of flour. Every weight on this chart is the spoon-and-level figure, and the sheet says so, because that is the convention the published sources use.

Related tools

• Grams to Cups Converter: one ingredient at a time, with the filling method and the source for every weight.
• Recipe Converter and Scaler: for when the whole recipe has to change size, including the leaveners that do not scale.
• Rice to Water Ratio: thirteen grains across the stovetop, the rice cooker and the Instant Pot.
• Browse all free kitchen tools by Nora →

What a chart cannot fix

A conversion chart turns one person's published average into your kitchen and hopes the averages hold. Three things end the problem instead of managing it.

• A scale. Weight is the same in every country and does not care how you scoop. It costs less than a bag of good flour and it retires the entire ingredient section of this chart.
• An oven thermometer. Home ovens commonly run 25 to 50 F off their own dial, and they drift as they age. Until you have checked yours, every row of the oven table is describing an oven that is not the one in your kitchen.
• Straight-sided pans and dry cups with flat rims. The pan arithmetic assumes straight walls, and a levelling sweep only levels against a flat edge. Rounded plastic rims are why two careful people measuring from one bag get two different weights.
• A processor for the recipes where flour weight decides everything. Pie and pastry dough is a race against warm butter. Our best food processors covers the bowls that handle a small dry batch without turning it to paste.

Sources & methodology

• NIST Handbook 44, Appendix C: the general tables of units. Source for the exact US gallon, cup, fluid ounce, ounce and pound, and for the 2.54 cm inch.
• King Arthur Baking, Ingredient Weight Chart: the measured cup weight for every flour, sugar, fat, grain, nut and dairy solid in the ingredient section, under the spoon-and-level convention.
• USDA FoodData Central: the 1-cup portion weights for water, milk, cream, yogurt, sour cream, the oils, honey and maple syrup, where King Arthur's rows follow the older kitchen convention that a cup of liquid weighs eight ounces.
• 21 CFR 101.9: the 240 ml US legal cup used on nutrition labels.
• The gas mark scale, gas 1 at 275 F rising 25 F per mark, and the rounded Celsius oven markings printed alongside it, are the standard UK convention as published by BBC Good Food and reproduced by Allrecipes. Fan ovens take the standard 20 C reduction.

Volume, weight and length rows are computed from the NIST definitions and are exact. Oven rows carry both the exact Celsius conversion and the oven dial marking, labelled separately, because they are not the same number. Pan figures are geometry: area is exact, volume is brim-full and stated as such, and the swap factor is the area ratio against a 9 by 13. Ingredient weights are carried verbatim from the dataset behind our grams to cups converter, and a build-time test asserts the two stay identical. A fixture suite asserts the NIST identities, both directions of every gas mark, the pan ratios in all five cup standards, the Latin-1 safety of every string the PDF can emit, and finiteness across all 3,825 reachable chart states on every build. Reviewed by Nora Whitfield, CIA Culinary Arts, ServSafe Certified. About Nora · Last reviewed September 10, 2026.

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