Metric to Imperial Recipe Conversion: Switch Units Without the Math

You found the perfect recipe. It is also written in grams, millilitres, and Celsius, and your kitchen works in cups, ounces, and Fahrenheit. Or the reverse: you cook in metric and the recipe came from a US blog that measures flour by the cup.

Here is the short version. To switch a recipe between metric and imperial: use a recipe app with a unit toggle, like Cook The List, so every ingredient converts at once and your shopping list stays in the units you actually shop in. Doing it by hand works too, but one rounding error per ingredient adds up fast, and it adds up exactly where it matters most, in baking.

This guide covers the conversions that trip people up, the ones where a straight conversion is wrong, and the fastest way to switch a whole recipe at once.

Why unit conversion goes wrong

Most conversion charts are fine. The problem is applying them twelve times in a row, under time pressure, with wet hands.

• Volume and weight are not interchangeable. A cup of flour weighs about 120 grams. A cup of honey weighs about 340 grams. Any chart that converts "1 cup = 240 ml" and stops there is only right for water.
• Rounding compounds. Round each ingredient slightly wrong and a cake that should be balanced comes out dry or dense. The error is small per line and real in total.
• Temperature has two scales and no shortcuts. 180 C is 350 F, but the dial on your oven may only show one of them, and guessing costs a burnt batch.
• Spoon measures differ by country. A US tablespoon is 15 ml. An Australian tablespoon is 20 ml. A recipe that says "tablespoons" without saying which country is already ambiguous before you convert anything.

The fix is converting the whole recipe in one pass, in a tool that keeps weight, volume, and temperature consistent, instead of converting line by line from a chart.

The conversions you actually need

Weight: grams to ounces and pounds

• 100 g = 3.5 oz
• 250 g = 8.8 oz (just over half a pound)
• 500 g = 1.1 lb
• 1 kg = 2.2 lb

For meat, butter, and chocolate, weigh when you can. Weight is the same in every kitchen; volume is not.

Volume: millilitres to cups and fluid ounces

• 60 ml = 1/4 cup = 2 fl oz
• 120 ml = 1/2 cup = 4 fl oz
• 240 ml = 1 cup = 8 fl oz
• 1 litre = about 4 1/4 cups

This is exact for liquids. For dry ingredients, volume is an approximation, which is why bakers prefer grams.

Dry ingredients: cups to grams (the ones people get wrong)

• Flour, all-purpose: 1 cup = 120 g
• Sugar, granulated: 1 cup = 200 g
• Brown sugar, packed: 1 cup = 220 g
• Butter: 1 cup = 227 g (one US stick is 1/2 cup, 113 g)
• Cocoa powder: 1 cup = 100 g
• Rolled oats: 1 cup = 90 g

If a recipe gives you cups for flour and your scale gives you grams, use the table above, not the liquid conversion. That single mistake is the most common reason a converted bake fails.

Temperature: Celsius to Fahrenheit

• 150 C = 300 F
• 160 C = 325 F
• 180 C = 350 F
• 200 C = 400 F
• 220 C = 425 F

Fan ovens run hotter than the dial says: drop the temperature by 20 C (about 25 F) from a conventional-oven recipe when using fan mode.

How to switch units in Cook The List

You sign in to your free Cook The List account first, then import the recipe from its link or pasted text. Once the recipe is in:

1. Open the recipe and find the unit toggle. Switch between metric and imperial once, and every ingredient converts together.
2. Set your servings with the plus and minus stepper. Quantities rescale and stay in your chosen units, so a recipe written for six in grams becomes a shop for two in cups without any fraction math.
3. Generate the shopping list. It comes back grouped into store categories, produce, dairy, pantry, and so on, in the units you shop in.

The point is not that conversion is hard. It is that doing it twelve times by hand is where the errors creep in, and a single pass removes them all.

When not to convert

• Baking by weight is better left in grams. If the original recipe is in grams, keep it in grams and weigh your ingredients. Converting a gram recipe to cups loses precision you cannot get back.
• Yeast and leavening do not scale by conversion alone. A recipe doubled in cups is not automatically doubled in yeast; check the recipe's own notes before scaling.
• Canned and packaged sizes differ by country. A US can of tomatoes is 28 oz (794 g). A European one is often 400 g. Convert the amount, then check what the shop actually sells, and adjust the recipe to the tin you can buy.

FAQ

Internal links

• /blog/youtube-recipe-to-shopping-list (import a video recipe, then convert its units)
• /blog/pinterest-recipe-to-shopping-list (import a pinned recipe, then convert its units)
• /recipe-scaler (scale the converted recipe up or down for your table)