Milliliters to US Cups

Exactly 236.5882365. The US cup is half a US pint, and the pint is defined through the US gallon of 3.785411784 litres, which fixes the cup at 236.5882365 mL. So a half cup is 118.29 mL and a quarter cup is 59.15 mL — neither is a round metric figure.

In the metric-cup countries, yes, exactly: Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa use a 250 mL cup, so 250 mL = 1.00 metric cup. In US measures it is 1.06 cups, because a US cup holds 236.59 mL. The recipe's origin decides which is right, and the table on this page shows both for every common quantity.

Food labelling uses FDA reference amounts, and the labelling cup is defined as 240 mL — deliberately close to the measuring cup but rounded for label arithmetic. It equals 1.01 US measuring cups (240 ÷ 236.5882365 = 1.0144). Cook with the 236.59 mL figure; read labels with the 240 mL one.

Per cup it is 250 − 236.5882365 = 13.41 mL, just under a US tablespoon (14.79 mL). One cup in a sauce: negligible. Four cups of liquid in a bread dough: 53.65 mL, about a quarter of a US cup — enough to feel in the crumb. Scaling is exactly where the two cups stop being interchangeable.

Not from volume alone — a cup is a volume, and grams depend on the ingredient: a US cup of flour weighs about 120 g while a cup of honey weighs about 340 g. Convert millilitres to cups on this page for the volume, then use the Cooking Converter, which applies published per-ingredient weights, for the grams.