BRITISH COOKERY EQUIVALENTS

When confronted with an American recipe, a British cook will usually see ingredients given in cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. There may occasionally be references to pounds, ounces, pints or fluid ounces, but they're not that common. In addition, there will be several ingredients that are unfamiliar, or simply unobtainable in the UK.

So, what's a British cook to do?

When it comes to measuring, the first point to remember is that if pints and fluid ounces are given, then they should be converted to British pints and fluid ounces. Fortunately, the British fluid ounce is only very slightly adrift and, except for the most critical cooking, they can be considered the same. However, the pint is markedly different. So:

• To convert US fluid ounces to British fluid ounces - multiply by 1.04
• To convert US pints to British pints - multiply by 0.83
• Some US recipes do give the measurements in metric ml, in which case no conversion is needed.

Measuring Cups and Spoons

In America, a cup is 8 US fluid ounces, a tablespoon is 1/2 US fluid ounce, and a teaspoon is 1/6 US fluid ounce. While you can use a British teaspoon or tablespoon measure (5ml and 15ml, as used for medicines, are very close to the US measures of a teaspoon and tablespoon), don't be tempted to use a British cup. The standard British cup is half a pint, or 10 fluid ounces, and it's about a fifth greater than the US equivalent.

This table gives the equivalents with an accuracy slightly greater than is practical for measuring.

Equivalents:

US Measure	US Volume	British	Metric
1 teaspoon	1/6 fluid oz.	0.17 fluid oz	4.9 ml
1 tablespoon	1/2 fluid oz.	.52 fluid oz	14.8 ml
1 cup	8 fluid ozs.	8.3 fluid ozs.	237 ml

1 cup = 16 tablespoons = 48 teaspoons / 1 tablespoon = 3 teaspoons

Although these measurements work just fine for liquids, dry ingredients are also measured in cups and spoons and this creates a further problem: British cooks are used to flour, sugar and so on being measured by weight.

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