Measurements without guesswork
Metric and US units, without pretending every spoon is the same.
Recipes on this site can switch between metric and US customary measurements. The switch changes only quantities that can be converted safely. It never guesses an ingredient's weight from a teaspoon or cup.
The simple rule
Metric mode uses grams and millilitres. US customary mode uses ounces, pounds and US kitchen volume measures where a volume conversion is safe. If a small ingredient is measured by mass, it can stay in grams even in US mode unless the recipe itself has a verified household-measure equivalent.
Why we do not offer one vague “Imperial” switch
Kitchen spoons are not identical across regions. The US kitchen convention used by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology treats a teaspoon as 5 mL, a tablespoon as 15 mL and a cup as 240 mL. Australian government recipes use a 20 mL tablespoon. A recipe containing 20 mL of oil therefore becomes 1 US tablespoon + 1 US teaspoon, not “1 tablespoon”, when US mode is selected.
Sources: NIST Metric Kitchen measurement equivalencies and Australian Government Get Up & Grow: Cooking for Children.
Why teaspoons do not automatically become grams
A gram measures mass. A teaspoon measures volume. The number of grams in a teaspoon depends on the ingredient, particle size, packing and sometimes the way it was prepared. This site therefore does not use one generic “teaspoon to grams” formula.
Where a cookbook recipe has been tested and edited with both metric and US measurements, those authored values take priority over the site's automatic display conversion. Otherwise, the site converts mass to mass and volume to volume only.
Small quantities
Very small masses can be awkward as decimal ounces. The site deliberately leaves masses below 28 g in grams unless the recipe supplies a verified US household measure. That is more useful than turning 2 g of dried herbs into a tiny decimal ounce or inventing a teaspoon conversion from density assumptions. NIST also recommends kitchen scales for reliable ingredient measurement, particularly for small or sticky quantities.
What the selector changes
The selected unit system is remembered only in this browser. It changes ingredient displays on recipes, printable recipe packs, saved-recipe print packs, the custom meal planner and generated shopping lists. It does not alter servings, cooking times, temperatures, nutrition calculations or the underlying recipe.
