Have you ever had a bake go not quite right, even if you’ve carefully levelled off every scoop and measured out your mise en place? Maybe a cake didn’t quite rise the way you expected, or a cookie spread more or less than the ones in the photo. Any baker worth their Maldon salt knows that baking is a more precise science than throwing together a salad – even the humidity in your kitchen can be make-or-break for your bake. (So can your oven lying to you.) So it’s worth knowing that not all tablespoons are made equal.

In the US, the UK, and even New Zealand, a standard tablespoon measure is 15ml.

An Australian tablespoon is 20ml.

Teaspoons, you’ll be glad to know, are a standard 5ml everywhere – but yes, that means that there are four teaspoons in an Aussie tablespoon and only three in an international one.

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What’s more, an American “cup” is precisely 236ml, while a metric cup measure is 250ml everywhere else. (But don’t get us started on the Americans and their imperial measurements.)

These differences seem minor, but they can add up quickly, especially if you’re mixing your volume and weight measurements and your dry and fluid volume measurements. If you’re making an American recipe that calls for “4 cups” of milk, but measuring them with a metric cup, you could be adding nearly 60ml more liquid than the recipe writer intends. With certain ingredients that have a big impact even in small amounts, like baking powder or yeast, those small shortfalls, wonky ratios or extra teaspoons could be the difference between a chewy and a cakey cookie, or a happy loaf of bread and a sad flat one.

Even if you’re not baking, you can still get caught out. Say you put a teaspoon more fine salt or chilli powder in a big batch of soup than the recipe writer intended – you’re going to notice that in the final product!

delicious. Food Director Lucy Nunes says that the best way to ensure you’re following a recipe precisely is to choose a recipe that gives weights, not just volume measures, and always use a digital scale to measure everything out. If you’re cooking from a cookbook – especially one that was written by a US or UK author – it’s always worth flipping to the back and looking for the chart of standard measurements. Check whether a tablespoon is given as 15ml or 20ml, and whether a cup is 250ml or 236ml (usually they’ll round up to 240ml), and proceed accordingly.

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The other thing to watch out for is your actual physical measuring spoons – just because a tablespoon measure is sold here, doesn’t mean it was manufactured to local standards. If the ones in your utensil drawer have the ml measurement written on them, check to see if the tablespoon says 15ml or 20ml. (This set from Woolworths has the correct Australian tablespoon size clearly marked, for example.) If yours just says “1 tbs” or similar, use a small gradated liquid measure or a digital scale to check it by measuring out 2-3 tbsp of water (20ml water always weighs 20g). And if your tablespoon is 15ml, your 1/2-tablespoon measure will be smaller too, and so on. If you bake a lot, you could even just have one set you use for Australian-written recipes, and one for internationals; or stick to your trusty 5ml teaspoon measure, and count out three or four as required.

Recipes that have been repeatedly tested, sub-edited and aligned to a consistent standard – like the recipes here on delicious.! – will always be more reliable. But the wild world of recipe blogs and vintage cookbooks is open to you if you keep in mind the many quirks of measurement standards around the world. Armed with this knowledge, you can go forth and emulsify, season, and bake with confidence.

How many grams are in a stick of butter?

Americans often buy their butter in “sticks”, which weigh about 113g, or a bit under half the standard Australian block of 250g. Recipes converted from American customary measurements often round the “stick” unit down to 110g or up to 115g. American butter can and often does have a slightly different butterfat-to-water ratio compared to Australian and European butters, too, so as with most cooking, trying a recipe multiple times to see which tweaks work best is often worth the effort.

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