US vs. UK measurements
Posted by veggydog on Jan 03, 2010 · Member since Sep 2006 · 1196 posts
Maybe I'm slow, but I just discovered this: Teaspoons and tablespoons differ in the US and the UK.
1 UK Tablespoon = 1.25 US Tablespoons
1 UK Teaspoon = .938 US Teaspoons
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/cooking-conversions/conversions.aspx
I wonder how frequently this causes trouble when we try each other's recipes...
really?? I have different measurements for UK / US teaspoons/table spoons.
I use http://www.onlineconversion.com/volume.htm so I don't know how accurate it is.
The only measuring spoons I have are metric and it's close enough to the US ones for me and I've never really had a problem. I think the difference is too small to notice unless you were using 8 tablespoons or something (arbitrary number, but I just mean lots of spponsful)
eta: when I first started uing vegweb the tea/tablespoon measurements weren't a problem, but I was surely freaked out by the cup measurement. I didn't realise there was a standard cup measurement and thought it was a teacup or something, and couldn't understand what size it should be!!
My measuring cups were one of my best purchases ever.
Yikes! So much for information you get on the Internet! ;D Well, I hope that your site is correct. 1.04 is certainly close enough that it wouldn't matter much.
Hmm. The plot thickens. This site lists both "Imperial" (1.200963822 US) and "Metric" (1.014432 US) Tablespoons, in addition to "US." ::)
Yup, it's confusing. Imperial cups and quarts etc. are not the same as US counterparts.
For everything metric, I use www.worldwidemetric.com
You just type in what you have and click and it calculates for you, in either direction. They even have a money conversion thing.
wow i didn't even know there was a difference! thanx
I'm an American in Holland, so I grew up with the measuring cups system and then moved here where they weigh everything. I'd lived in Europe before, but never bothered to cook this much, so I never paid attention before.
Most UK cookbooks that I've bought have tended to have both US/UK measurements. Otherwise, I tend to base most of my measurements on flavor. It's only baking that is when you often need more precise measurements, so I tend to stick with the ones I know, because I've brought measuring cups when I moved.
huh. I know I have to convert measurements in 'oz' and 'lb' to things I understand, and I've always used that onlineconversion site Shell mentioned. But a tablespoon? And a cup? I just assumed a spoon was a spoon! hmmm I would guess ours are more like UK measures than US but I really didn't know there was a difference! oooops.
I Love hearing stuff like this... I had No Idea they were Different!!!!
Never can be Simple- Can It.
Something I've been wondering about... with UK recipes that mention, say, 200g of flour, is that by weight or by volume? (Well, "200g" being the volume of 200g of water. Like in the US with a cup being "8 oz," when a cup of flour is not 8 oz at all. if that makes sense). I figured it was weight... but... i mean, does everybody weigh everything? it seems like that would be a pain.
yes we weigh everything.....I like the US system and LOVE my measuring cups.
Weighing is a pain, especially if you're weighing directly into the mixing bowl and then accidentally add too much - trying to get it out again is hard!
yes we weigh everything.....I like the US system and LOVE my measuring cups.
Weighing is a pain, especially if you're weighing directly into the mixing bowl and then accidentally add too much - trying to get it out again is hard!
I bought a set of measuring cups and spoons in LIDL, only to discover the measurements aren't marked! Boooo. The spoons are marked in "deciliters" which is singularly unhelpful, since no recipes I've ever run across use those. The cups have no marks. I finally poured water into them from a Pyrex measuring cup, and marked them with "indelible" ink from a CD marker, but it washed off in the dishwasher anyway.
In Spain nobody measures anything. To bake, you might read "100 grammes of flour" but they still talk about "a water glassful", "a wine glassful" or "a nut of butter". There is one famous (?) recipe for sponge cake that uses the single-serving yogurt pot as its measurement. One of yogurt, two of sugar, three of flour...like that. Everything is done by eyeball and "the feeling." For the first two years I lived here I couldn't cook for the life of me, until I got used to the size of my new utensils (glasses, bowls etc) and somehow learned to eyeball.
Yabbit,
Try IKEA for measuring cups. Otherwise, I found some cheap on eBay and they did ship them to me here in Holland.