We have a few recipes from friends in France and Sweden that use metric measurements. Some of the volume-volume (e.g. 1 teaspoon=5 mL) or weight-weight (e.g. 500 g=1.1 pounds) conversions are pretty trivial. Other conversions are more difficult, and I wanted to document these to ease future recipe conversion.
One of the common, slightly difficult ingredients is butter. Most domestic recipes with which I am familiar give butter measurements by volume (e.g. “2 Tbsp butter”), whereas all of the metric recipes I’ve made measure butter by weight (e.g. “50 g butter”). I don’t want to go through deriving the conversion; instead, here’s a table showing a few common measurements and approximations (indicated by a leading “~”):
| US measure | Metric measure |
|---|---|
| ~½ stick | 50 g |
| ~1½ Tbsp | 20 g |
| 1 lb | ~450 g |
| 1 stick (¼ lb) | ~115 g |
| ¼ c | ~55 g |
| 1 Tbsp | ~15 g |
Good! Those conversions really help! Thanks.