Ingredient Density Converter

About this converter

Recipes written in volume — cups, tablespoons, teaspoons — are convenient to scoop, but they are unreliable to measure. A cup of flour weighs anywhere from 110 grams (sifted) to 150 grams (packed). That 30 to 40 percent swing is enough to turn a tender cake into a doorstop. Bakers who want consistent results use weight: a digital scale, grams, the same number every time. This converter bridges between the two systems.

Paste a recipe ingredient list as-is — copied from a website, a cookbook, an email from your aunt — and the converter rewrites every line as a weight in grams (or ounces), using a built-in density table for 35 common baking and cooking ingredients. It recognises mixed units ("1 1/2 cups", "2 tbsp"), several spellings, and both English and French ingredient names. What you get back is a shopping-list-ready printout that takes the guesswork out of measuring.

The math: density × volume = weight

Weight = volume × density. A cup is 240 millilitres; a tablespoon is 15 millilitres; a teaspoon is 5 millilitres. To convert volume to weight, multiply by the ingredient's bulk density — the mass per unit volume of the ingredient as it would be measured by scoop.

Worked example. All-purpose flour has a bulk density of about 0.5 g/mL (King Arthur). One cup of all-purpose flour = 240 mL × 0.5 g/mL = 120 grams. Granulated sugar is denser, about 0.85 g/mL: one cup = 240 × 0.85 = 204 grams. Honey is denser still, about 1.4 g/mL: one tablespoon = 15 × 1.4 = 21 grams. The table farther down the page lists per-cup, per-tablespoon, and per-teaspoon weights for 35 ingredients drawn from the King Arthur Baking Ingredient Weight Chart and USDA FoodData Central.

Densities are approximate because ingredients pack. Sifted flour is less dense than scooped flour; brown sugar is less dense un-packed than packed. The numbers in the table assume the method most home recipes assume — light scoop-and-level — but for the most accurate baking work, weigh once and write the gram value next to the original cup measurement so you do not have to convert again.

When weight beats volume

Weight is more accurate, faster, and easier to clean up than volume. Most professional bakery recipes are written in grams (or in baker's percentages, which require weight) for exactly this reason. A 0.1-gram or 1-gram resolution scale handles every home-baking ingredient, fits in a drawer, costs less than a set of measuring cups, and only ever needs one bowl (the scale's tare function zeros out the bowl weight).

For bread and pastry, the difference between weight and volume is dramatic. A loaf of bread made with a scale comes out the same every time; a loaf made with a measuring cup varies by a meaningful percentage depending on how the flour was scooped. Doughs and batters that need a specific hydration (the ratio of water to flour by weight) cannot be made reliably from volume measurements at all.

For cooking — soups, sautés, stews — volume is usually fine because the recipe tolerates a 10-20 percent range. Save the scale for baking, bread, pastry, and any recipe where you are noticing inconsistent results. For ingredient-by-ingredient conversion as you read a recipe, this tool is faster than typing each one into a search engine.