How to convert a European recipe to American measurements

European recipes measure dry ingredients by weight, liquids in millilitres and oven temperatures in Celsius, often for a fan oven. American recipes measure most things by volume and bake in Fahrenheit. Converting is three separate jobs: weights, liquids, and heat — plus a vocabulary list.

The easiest conversion of all is to skip it: a kitchen scale costs less than a cookbook and lets you follow the recipe exactly as written. If you don’t have one, here is how to convert accurately.

Grams to cups: it depends on the ingredient

A cup measures volume, a gram measures weight, so there is no single “grams to cups” number. A cup of flour weighs far less than a cup of sugar. These figures come from King Arthur Baking’s ingredient weight chart:

Butter is the easy one: one US stick is 113 g, 8 tablespoons or ½ cup, so 250 g of butter is about 2¼ sticks.

Flour is the risky one. Scooped straight from the bag, a cup can hold well over 120 g. Spoon the flour into the cup and level it off, or the converted recipe will be dry.

Millilitres to cups and spoons

Liquids convert by volume, so these work for water, milk, stock, oil and cream alike. A US cup is 8 US fluid ounces, about 236.6 ml (NIST):

Watch for “cup” in Australian and some UK recipes: a metric cup is 250 ml, slightly more than a US cup. For soups and stews it does not matter; for baking, measure the millilitres.

Celsius to Fahrenheit, and the fan oven trap

The formula is °F = °C × 9 ÷ 5 + 32. In practice, round to the nearest common oven setting:

The fan oven trap: many British and European recipes give a fan (convection) temperature, written “180 °C fan” or “160 °C fan / 180 °C”. Fan temperatures are usually about 20 °C lower than conventional, because moving air cooks faster. If your oven has no fan, add about 20 °C before converting. If the recipe gives both, convert the conventional one.

Gas marks

Older British recipes use gas marks:

Ingredient names that don’t match

The measurements are only half of it. These words trip people up:

“Grill” is the one that causes the most damage: a British recipe that says “grill for 3 minutes” means the overhead heat element — what an American oven calls the broiler.

When the recipe is in another language too

A recipe from a French, German, Spanish or Turkish blog adds a second layer: the words themselves, and ingredient names that a general translator gets wrong.

ChefBook can import the recipe from its link and translate it into your language in one tap, ingredients and units included. Translation is a Premium feature; free accounts get 5 uses of Premium features a week. The guides on translating any recipe and importing a recipe from a website walk through both steps.

If you are converting because you want to change the quantity as well, do the conversion first and then scale the recipe — scaling grams is much easier than scaling fractions of cups.

Questions people ask

How many cups is 200 g of flour?

About 1⅔ cups of all-purpose flour, at 120 g per cup, measured by spooning flour into the cup and levelling it.

What is 180 °C in Fahrenheit for baking?

356 °F, which every recipe rounds to 350 °F. If the recipe says 180 °C fan and your oven has no fan, bake at about 200 °C, or 400 °F.

Is a UK cup the same as a US cup?

No. Modern British and Australian recipes that use cups mean the 250 ml metric cup; a US cup is about 237 ml. Most British recipes use grams and millilitres instead.

What is double cream in America?

The closest is heavy cream (or heavy whipping cream). Double cream has more fat, so it whips faster and is harder to split, but heavy cream works in almost every recipe.