1. Flour
2. Sugar
3. Fluid
4. Butter
5. Gelatin
6. Oven Temperature
Measurements can be a real pain sometimes when converting American or Australian recipes to European (and vice versa), especially since not many realize their cup and tablespoon measurements are different.
Here is a quick reference on them as well as conversions for oven temperatures. I shall keep this post on my side bar for easy reference.
Things get worse as in Greece where our measurements are not very precise. The traditional recipes given by mother to daughter say some salt, little pepper, some rice, some parsley, a handful of that, olive oil etc.
I will try from now on to be more specific in my recipes and especially in baking. We measure with (tea) cups or glasses (which are about 200 ml in capacity) but again how can someone know what kind of cup or glass I am using? I’ve had some questions about my measurements in Group Recipes, so I have decided from now on to use either cups or grams.
Personally I also have problems converting butter measurements and I am sure that others as well will have similar problems so according to some measurements I have found on the internet, I shall use these as a guideline for my recipes.
Regarding my older recipes I have filled a tea cup and a water glass with 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of sugar and you can see that the cup and the glass are not full, so now you can get the picture that in my older recipes when I say 1 glass of flour it was a little bit more.
1. Flour: (old measurements 1 glass = 120 grams or 1 cup 140 grams)
2. Sugar: (old measurements 1 glass = 175 grams or 1 cup 200 grams)
3. Fluid: (old measurements 1 glass = 220 grams or 1 cup 250 grams or 200 ml)
4. Butter (250 grams):
American Butter Conversions
1 stick of butter = 1/4 pound
1 stick of butter = 1/2 cup
1 stick of butter = 8 tablespoons
1 stick of butter = 4 ounces
1 stick of butter = 113 grams
Australian Butter Conversions
Butter Conversions:
1 tablespoon = 20g
1/4 cup = 63g
1/2 cup = 125g
1 cup = 250g
5. Gelatin sheets vs gelatin powder
One Knox powdered gelatin envelope (US)
= 1/4 oz, about 7 grams.
1 (US) envelope:
= 7 g,
= 7 (1-gram) sheets,
= 4 (1.66-gram) sheets,
= 3 or 3 1/2 (2-gram) sheets.
1 (Europe) envelope:
= 11 g
= 11 (1-gram) sheets,
= 6.5 or 7 (1.66-gram) sheets
= 5 (2-gram) sheets
Source: Recipe Link
Note: for 1 litre of liquid you will need 12 sheets of gelatine
6. Oven Temperature Conversions
| Gas Mark | Fahrenheit | Celsius | Description |
| 1/4 | 225 | 110 | Very cool/very slow |
| 1/2 | 250 | 130 | — |
| 1 | 275 | 140 | cool |
| 2 | 300 | 150 | — |
| 3 | 325 | 170 | very moderate |
| 4 | 350 | 180 | moderate |
| 5 | 375 | 190 | — |
| 6 | 400 | 200 | moderately hot |
| 7 | 425 | 220 | hot |
| 8 | 450 | 230 | — |
| 9 | 475 | 240 | very hot |
Tags: measurements
November 5th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
This should be a very useful post for everyone IVY!
November 5th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Very good information Ivy! Thanks.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Thank you ivy you are right some times it gets too complicated ! Viva i grammi !
November 6th, 2008 at 3:09 am
Yes, Ivy, you are so right! I always have to Google different measurements. Thanks for this handy-dandy reference. Great idea!
November 6th, 2008 at 3:12 am
back home in Indonesia, at old times, my mother usually measured using glasses or tumblers. her recipe collection is full of recipe using this measurement. it is me who’s got the job to convert them now hehehe… very informative post you’ve got here, ivy. thanks heaps!
November 6th, 2008 at 4:25 am
Great post Ivy, this will be very useful! I look this up on google all the time. Bookmarked. Thanks.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:13 am
This is very useful; I use the sweet and simple bakes conversion chart. Would you believe it took me forever to realise that the US stick of butter was almost half the size of my stick of butter (250g or 227g depending on brand)? You can imagine the initial baking disasters and confusion before I caught on.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Ivy thankyou for the info, i am going to print out this post and keep in my kitchen. It is always a disaster with me when it come to measurement. I always use grams or ml measurement, but then when i look to american blogs or books it is cups.
I posted your cheesey snack and i have got lots of wonderful feedbacks from it.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Oh, this is so useful!! I have a rubric on my blog called “conversions/substitutions” in which I talk about this same problem. I highly recommend this website too: http://www.onlineconversion.com/cooking.htm. It’s very thorough! I’m getting an intuitive sense now of the conversions and don’t have too much trouble when I’m baking, but when you want to share a recipe, that’s a different story!
November 6th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
A great helpful post, Ivy. I’m always confused with the US butter measurements coz they tend to measure in stick, cup or tablespoon. I’ve bookmarked it for future reference and thanks a lot!
November 6th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
I am very bad when it comes to measurements. My mom’s recipes are like those of Greek moms. A little bit of this and a pinch of that and some of that other one. LOL
I usually don’t measure anything when I am cooking, though. Some people are so strict about measurements that take the fun out of cooking. :-p
Great post Ivy!
November 6th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
I never knew how different baking can be across the world until I started blogging. Everyone started using the metric system, and while it’s more accurate, I was a little confused. I think the little inaccuracies are what makes our bakes unique
November 6th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Hi ivy
thanks for passing by my blog and leaving such wonderful encouraging words..it helps and thank you. I feel happy with this post as at any time if i require information on measurement, i know where to go quickly..well summarised.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Ivy this is a great post and one that is great for reference. Measurements are very important in baking to be correct. I must bookmark this post
Rosie x
November 6th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Ivy, this is so wonderful of you to put this information here. Only today I was struggling with such measurement conversions. I do have some links, but do you mind if I link to your post in my blog?
You are so right about it, it isn’t easy at all. This will surely be of help.
November 7th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Conversions can sometimnes deter me from recreating a dish in my own kitchen sis. I always fibd myself googling. I had a question about what 130 grams of puff pastry was which to me is 1/4 of a package but I had to Google it.
November 7th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
You have no idea how helpful this is. I’m constantly avoiding making some recipes because of the conversion. Even Psychgrad and I often speak different measurement languages - I still think Imperial and PG thinks Metric.
November 9th, 2008 at 8:24 am
What an incredibly wonderful thing you did in posting this. Great job, Ivy!
November 9th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Thanks for this Ivy - it is very handy.
November 10th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Ivy, I find Lore’s ‘Culiverter’ to be quite helpful when it comes to sorting out and converting measurements, but thanks for your valuable input on this matter.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
I am bookmarking this important post! thank you!!!
November 14th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I am very glad that this post might be also helpful for you all. Lore’s Culiverter is still very useful and I do use it whenever necessary but this is quite different having all these measurements in one post. So if you have something I can add to the post, please let me know.