For the longest time I was incredibly confused about measurements in the kitchen. The basics, like cups and tablespoons, were easy enough to follow and are at the core of beginner recipe following. However, once weight got thrown in the mix everything got really confusing for me. So, in the spirit of confusing less people, and to justify our use of weight on the site, we wanted to clear things up.

Most recipes measure quantities in volume. Cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, quarts gallons… It is all volume. I feel like I knew that. I had acquired that knowledge without realizing it as I am guessing most other people have. But volume can be very different than weight. The key there is “can” be. I believe the main reason my confusion between what was volume and weight stems from the fact that for many things the difference is pretty forgiving. It wasn’t until attempting to bake bread that I learned that the grams are provided for a reason, using volume for flour is like guessing.

So, if volume and weight are different, and weight is more accurate since it is based on actual mass of an ingredient rather than the space a particular sample of it takes up, why use both? I could not find a great answer other than convenience, particularly before the days of digital scales. Especially for the casual kitchen, precision isn’t the key. Most ingredients won’t change too much per volume measurement precise weight wasn’t needed.

If precision is the name of the game, however, every ingredient has its own unique conversion between volume and weight, or at least reliable averages. My naïve self would try to google things like cups to oz. conversion, not realizing that this will be different for every ingredient. However, many ingredients are fundamentally close to each other. Most of the fluids we drink, like milk, juices, syrups, etc. are high in water. Therefore, high water foods will have conversions very close to water. Water, by design, has very easy volume to weight relationships: 1 ml of water = 1 gram of water.

There is one special point of confusion I want to talk about, though: ounces (oz) and fluid ounces (fl oz). They seem alike but they too are volume and weight. What is even worse is many volume measuring tools will just put oz, even if they mean fl oz. Now, for water, that is the same thing. Again, by design, the units make waters oz and fl oz interchangeable. Even for thick fluids, like heavy cream, it is close. 1 oz of heavy cream is about 1.06 fl oz. However, if you were to measure something like flour you would likely ruin whatever you are making. For flour, 1 oz. = 1.81 fl oz. So, if you too have a volume tool that just says oz., then flour measured in it will be almost half of what it should be.

Have you ever tried weighing the 1 cup of flour you just scooped using your measuring cup and then repeating the process? Most likely, the weight will not be the same for each cup, simply based on how you filled the cup. Factors like whether the flour was sifted can make it vary quite a bit. Our goal here at Formulated Flavors is to provide you the most accurate recipe at home. For this reason, our recipes will provide both weight and volume measurements. We hope that you will learn to air on the side of utilizing the weight measurements to ensure you using the exact same amount of each ingredient as we are here in our kitchen.

We hope this helps you understand more about the accuracy of measurements while baking or cooking. It is worth looking at your measuring tools to see what they say as well! Plus, if you have a scale on hand why not go ahead and give the flour scoop test a try and you will see exactly what we mean.