Talk:Cup (unit)

message: In the US at least, the "cup" is used so often as a measurement of flour, sugar, and similar dry ingredients that I think this merits a mention, especially since in other parts of the world cups are used only to measure wet ingredients (or "bulk" ingredients like chopped vegetables, where cup measurement is not very exact). Americans particularly might be surprised to find that most places outside the US use weight exclusively for measuring flour and sugar.62.114.88.167 11:48, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Old comment but it should be mentioned that measuring dry ingredients using volume rather than weight is generally only done at home in the U.S. No professional bakery worth it's salt would measure any dry ingredients using anything but a scale. 2601:18C:4301:2880:F445:3495:E0E0:9BDF (talk) 21:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Dry Ingredients

message: I live in Canada and grew up thinking that a cup was 250mL, just for the easy math I suppose. All of my measuring gear is set for 240mL though, so I'm not sure the statement that Canadian cups are 250mL is accurate.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.236.190.107 (talk) 12:57, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm in Canada, and all the measuring cups in the kitchen show 250 mL on a metric scale on one side, and 8 oz. on a presumably US customary scale on the other side.  When filled to 8 oz., the level is short of the 250 mL mark, I suppose at 237 mL if the scales are agreeing with the conversion math.  One of the cups is identified as from the US.  It seems that in Canada, we learn that a cup is practically 250 mL, learn that we use Imperial units from England, but in practice use the same cups as in the US which are 8 US fluid ounces and not 10 Imperial fluid ounces. 199.247.253.42 (talk) 03:01, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Canadian Cups

message: Quote:  for example, in German recipes (cup) will simply refer to an amount that roughly fits into a typical teacup
... which is why this unit is very rarely (if at all) used in German recipes. Maikel (talk) 14:52, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  You will still find these measures a lot in older cooking books, newer regional cooking tradition and personal (family) recipes  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.58.202.57 (talk) 15:29, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well you'll find a lot of "tablespoons" (lit. "eating spoons", in the varieties "stroked-down" and "piled-up") and "teaspoons" ("stroked-down" or "piled-up") and even knife-tips, but I don't think there are so many "cups" around.--2001:A61:20EC:CD01:E040:4962:D974:C204 (talk) 12:06, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  German cups 

message: Quote:  In Europe... - the UK is in Europe, so this is an overgeneralisation. Danensis (talk) 19:48, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Using volume measures to estimate mass 

message: After a bunch of searching, I could not find any non-Wikipedia-inspired uses of the term "United States 'legal' cup" and I believe it is a Wikipedia invention. While it's interesting trivia that a US regulation (not law) for nutrition labeling rounds the cup to 240mL, it's not creating a new unit of measure. This would be better as a footnote, not a confusing section that leads people to believe a cup in the US is 240mL. The term "metric cup" also appears to be fictional. I could only find one published use of the term prior to 2000, in a book proposing a "metric cup". And in many years in Canada I never heard anyone refer to the "metric cup". TL;DR: the terms "metric cup" and "legal cup" should be removed unless citations exist for their use. Billgordon1099 (talk) 03:23, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The term "metric cup" is most definitely not fictional.  It's used all over the place in Australia and New Zealand, even by people who should know better.  I think what you're saying is that it's not in use in Canada.  You just need to google for "australian cup measurement" to find thousands of hits.  I've updated the article to reflect this, though it might need further tuning. I can't find a really definitive one, so I've added the best I can find.  In all likelihood there's a Government site that confirms this. Groogle (talk) 01:54, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: If you don't have a definitive source, don't add the information. "In all likelihood" is not a source. 2601:58B:4204:B6B0:647B:B8EE:39F0:D770 (talk) 00:20, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  I don't believe "metric cup" and "legal cup" are genuine terms 

message: Apparently a Korean cup is 200ml as the Japanese cup. (see e.g. http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/FO/FO_EN_7_5_1_1.jsp) 86.56.94.60 (talk) 12:56, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Korean cup 

message: From the introduction of the article
"No matter what size cup is used, the ingredients of a recipe measured with the same size cup will have their volumes in the same proportion to one another. The relative amounts to ingredients measured  differently (by weight, or by different measures of volume such as teaspoons, etc.) may be affected by the definitions used."
This is explained like it was an advantage of cups over other units. But couldn't this be said about every single unit? Equal volumes of whatever lead up to equal proportions in a recipe. Doesn't matter if it's cups, or truckloads , or cubic palm sizes.
It makes the article look not serious and to be honest I think it should be removed. Dsnipper (talk) 21:13, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "ingredients measured with the same size cup will have their volumes in the same proportion to one another" 

message: On 21 October an anonymous user changed the page with the comment "Reference to the UK cup edited - it is not in general use (I have never seen it in a modern British cookbook and is a matter of puzzlement to many British readers of US cookbooks."
This says more about the user than the facts.  Many cookbooks refer to it, and removing that information can just add to the sense of puzzlement.  I've reinstated it with a couple of references.  If anybody can find substantiated evidence that it's no longer in use, feel free to add an appropriate comment. Groogle (talk) 05:50, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Don't revert content without valid reason

message: What about in Canada, the cup is often used, but no mention? Amqui (talk) 23:10, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jamaica 

message: The cup is an informal unit of domestic cookery, and I think having a proper history section would clear up a lot of the debate here. As it's a unit of volume, if a cook was using the same cup to measure everything then the proportions would be the same, so originally it didn't matter how big the cup was. When did cups become standardised in the US? Relatively recently, I would imagine. Gymnophoria (talk) 01:06, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  History of this measurement?  

message: The current article has this prose:
:A "coffee cup" is 1.5 dl or 150 millilitres or 5.07 US customary fluid ounces, and is occasionally used in recipes.  It is also used in the US to specify coffeemaker sizes (what can be referred to as a  Tasse à café).  A "12-cup" US coffeemaker makes 57.6 US customary fluid ounces of coffee, or 6.8 metric cups of coffee.
This seems correct to me, and has very precise-sounding measurements; sadly without references.  Yet, the Tasse à café that this article links to says:
:A tasse à café (, coffee cup) is a cup, generally of white porcelain and of around 120 ml (4  fl oz), in which coffee is served.
Additionally, the coffee cup article doesn't talk about "coffee cup" as it relates to Cup (unit), but has a section on the demitasse:
:The Demitasse is a cup specially crafted for espresso. It is 60-80 ml in capacity, and usually served on a saucer.
Going to the Demitasse article, we find:
:[The demitasse] typically has about 60–90  ml (2–3 fl oz) capacity — half the size of a full coffee cup (a tasse à café is about 120 ml (4 fl oz)).
All this seems to suggest that a "coffee cup" is probably somewhere in the range of 120-180 ml, but that's just guessing based on the uncited estimates made in Cup (unit), Tasse à café, coffee cup, and Demitasse.  Anyone know of a reliable source for information on this topic? -- RobLa (talk) 18:16, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: This is under the "customary cup" section for a reason, in that the measurement is customary.  That being said, 4 fluid ounces is the customary measurement of a cup of brewed coffee in the U.S., as recognized by manufacturers of coffee brewing machinery.  The Black and Decker carafe pictured illustrates this, and although the carafe doesn't give the measurements in ounces, I have personally checked them and found them to be accurate (4 ounces per "cup" of brewed coffee and 5 ounces per "cup" of water).  This is true for drip coffeemakers, but percolating coffeemakers may have a greater loss:  Folgers says to start with 6 fluid ounces of water to produce each 4-ounce cup of brewed coffee, presumably with a percolating coffeemaker.  However, the references to a U.S. "coffee cup" and "12-cup US coffeemaker" under the "Metric Cup" section are incorrect - although misleadingly precise, they refer to the water used to brew the coffee but incorrectly state that they are for the brewed coffee itself (a 12-cup coffeemaker makes 48 ounces of brewed coffee, not 57.6).  Since a customary U.S. cup of coffee isn't metric, and since the references are incorrect anyway, these probably should be removed. -- Aahz, 24.126.154.144 (talk) 15:53, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, the unsourced content should not be removed. Wikipedia requires that every statement be verifiable, not that every statement be cited. As the anonymous editor above has indicated, the evidence that coffee cups are 4 fluid ounces can be commonly found in the instruction manuals, and by talking to industry experts, so is therefore not dubious. I also strongly agree with the anonymous editor's statement about customary; customary units are not usually precisely defined in law or regulations, and therefore citing precise controlling definitions is difficult. Peter K. Sheerin 01:00, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Coffee cup" 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion 

message: Since when has the abbreviation for litres been a capital L, and millilitres been mL? I've only ever seen lowercase l. 195.157.65.228 (talk) 11:10, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a symbol, not an abbreviation. Both l and L are permitted by BIPM, while NIST prefers the upper case L. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:27, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  L? 

message: I find the first line of the article ambiguous: "Not to be confused with drinking cups, or "cup" serving sizes, which may not necessarily correspond with this unit."
I understand that a drinking cup may not hold 1 cup of liquid, but what is a cup serving size? Is it an alternative unit of measurement? It's not mentioned anywhere except the first line of the lede: "The cup is a cooking measure of volume, commonly associated with cooking and serving sizes."
There's a page on serving size but it's just about "the amount of a food or drink that is generally served." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serving_size
I'm guessing a "cup serving size" is not a unit of measurement but just an informal term e.g. if you serve someone a cup of ice cream, it may not be 1 cup in volume. 
Can the wording of the first line be clarified?
24.69.141.161 (talk) 22:34, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cup serving size? 

message: Cups are used in US recipe books. To be a unit, it must be legally defined. In the US it is 240 ml.
In the UK, pubs use pints (lawful unit) and half-pints (not cup).
A cup from a coffee shop varies on the size of cup they give you.
There is no such thing as a metric cup. The expression is misleading. It is not SI, and also not decimal (multiples or sub-multiples of 10).
Book reader (talk) 22:23, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cup is no unit 

message: A change I made today to the United Kingdom section of the article was , with a personal comment Clearly has not seen many pre-metric British cookbooks. Please refrain from assuming you know what I have or have not seen. I have a stack of pre-metric British cookbooks collected over a large number of years in my pre-metric British house; they do not use Cup as a standard measure, using instead imperial units for weight (and volume where unavoidable) as the article states. I made the change because the information in the text was all unreferenced; in particular, the claim that there is such a thing as a "standardised cup" in use in the United Kingdom. I inserted a Template:By whom request for clarification in January this year but it has not been fulfilled, which led to my removing the affected information. If you have reliable sources for the official definition of a Cup as a unit of volume in the United Kingdom, please add them to the article (or point me at them and I will do it). Bazza (talk) 15:16, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reversion to unreferenced version