Teaspoons Vs Tablespoons

Two measurements typically used in cooking. Three teaspoons equals one tablespoon. Anyone else know how many milliliters a tablespoon is?

Teaspoon (tsp or t) about 5 ml, Tablespoon (Tbsp, tbsp or T) is 3x that.

 1 teaspoon   (US) =  4.929 milliliters 
 1 tablespoon (US) = 14.79  milliliters

 2 tablespoons ~= 1 fluid ounce
 3 tablespoons ~= 1 jigger (standard measure for mixing alcoholic drinks)
 1 cup = 8 fluid ounces = 16 tablespoons = 48 teaspoons
 1 gallon = 4 quarts (quarter-gallons) = 8 pints = 16 cups
 1 gallon (US) = 128 fluid ounces = 231 cubic inches
 A fluid ounce is larger than 1/16 of a pound of water (liquid at STP).

Some said he hoped the rest of the world didn't have to suffer with this. But these are common cooking measurements around the world. AmericanCulturalAssumption, I'm afraid. A pint is 20 fluid ounces in the UK (and I think pretty much everywhere except the US). As an American once told me, in a stunningly inaccurate aide-memoire "a pint's a pound, the whole world round"

What's interesting is that here in the US everyone has a standard set of measuring spoons for various fractions of teaspoons, a tablespoon and fractions of cups. In Germany, where they use the in every way superior metric system, recipes often specify ingredients in teaspoons, tablespoons and cups but nobody has standard measuring cups. Even more mystifying, baking recipes sometimes specify things like 100-150 grams of something, making them needlessly imprecise. -- AndrewQueisser

If this something is flour, it is often not a matter of imprecise recipes, but of varying humidity of the flour. -- OleAndersen

And it's cooking, not chemistry...

There is a difference? -oa

A teaspoon in the Netherlands is much smaller than in the US. So when it is used in Dutch recipes it is often meant as 'a little bit'. If a Dutch cook uses a US recipe stating that he/she has to use a teaspoon of pepper, he/she would probably use too little making the dinner a bit lame. A bigger problem will arise the other way around... -- AlexVanDenBergh

There's a difference between a teaspoon used to stir your tea (which can be any size) and a teaspoon used to measure ingredients (which is a standard measure). Even in the US, using an ordinary eating spoon is likely to be quite incorrect.

Australian measuring spoons are different. Just out of perversity I guess. The only one I recall at the moment is that an Australian tablespoon is 20ml, not 15ml - four teaspoons instead of three. -- GavinLambert

I think a UK tablespoon is four teaspoons. At least, i hope it is! -- TomAnderson

Nope, UK Tablespoon is 15ml, teaspoon is 5ml

Of course, real cooks don't measure ;-)

I hope it isn't... I'm in NewZealand, which you'd think would have the UK measurements, but I only have a 15ml tablespoon. Maybe I've been getting the wrong sizes all these years :( -- GavinLambert

Same for Canada: 1tsp= 5ml, 1Tbs = 15ml. [I think you'll find it's tsp and tbsp :) ]

Tea was not something I encountered much as a child in rural Kentucky, so "teaspoon" was largely meaningless to me unless it meant a spoon with a long handle for stirring iced tea, the only kind of tea I knew about. I thought a tablespoon was something you used for eating at the table. I didn't discover until after I married that a teaspoon was what I had been calling a spoon (no qualifier), and a "tablespoon" was a bigger spoon used for serving food. I'm not sure if I'm at all typical, though. I'm quite unobservant if something doesn't interest me. Maybe I'm just male. Or human.

CategoryFoodAndDrink