1 Cup of Butter in Grams

One cup of butter is 227 grams

The direct answer: 1 US cup of butter is 227 grams. That figure comes from USDA FoodData Central, the federal nutrient database, which lists the household measures for butter as 1 cup = 227 g, 1 tablespoon = 14.2 g, 1 stick = 113 g and a pat = 5 g. The same weights apply to salted and unsalted butter, which differ by salt and not by mass.

You will also see 226 g quoted for a cup of butter. That is the same butter counted a different way: two sticks at 113 g each. The 1 gram gap is rounding, not a different product, and no recipe can taste it. Tablespoons land in the same place from a third direction, because 16 level tablespoons at 14.2 g add up to 227.2 g.

By weight, a 227 g cup is about 8 ounces, or 8.007 to be fussy, because one avoirdupois ounce is 28.35 g and 227 divided by 28.35 is 8.007. By volume the same cup is 8 fluid ounces, a different unit that happens to agree for butter and confuse almost everything else in the kitchen.

Cups to grams table for butter

Here is the ladder from a quarter cup to two cups, using the USDA weight of 227 g per cup and 717 kcal per 100 g for the calorie column. Grams are shown to a tenth where the cup fraction needs it.

Read one row backwards as a worked example: a recipe that asks for 170.3 g of butter wants 3/4 cup, which is 1.5 sticks or 12 tablespoons. And any row can be checked by hand, since cups times 227 gives the grams, grams times 7.17 gives the calories, and grams divided by 28.35 gives the ounces.

The same cup in sticks, tablespoons and ounces

One cup of butter is the crossing point of a small family of units, and knowing the whole family at once is what saves a recipe mid mix.

Three worked amounts, the ones that show up most in baking. One and a half cups is 340.5 g, 3 sticks, 24 tablespoons, 12.0 ounces and 2,441 kcal, which is 1.36 of a 250 g metric block. Two cups is 454 g, 4 sticks, 32 tablespoons, 16.0 ounces and 3,255 kcal, exactly one 1 pound box and 1.82 blocks. One third of a cup is 75.7 g, 5.33 tablespoons and 543 kcal, the amount in a standard shortbread base.

The 250 g row is worth a second look. A metric block is 1.10 cups, so a European recipe asking for 250 g of butter wants a full cup plus about 1.6 tablespoons, and guessing two sticks leaves the dough 24 g short of fat.

Not every cup of butter weighs the same

The 227 g cup belongs to block butter, cut to the line. USDA lists separate weights for the other forms, and the gaps are large enough to wreck a recipe.

All four rows come from USDA FoodData Central records 173410, 173430, 173411 and 173412, published in the 2019 database release. Whipped butter has air beaten in, so its cup weighs about two thirds as much as a regular cup, and a whipped stick weighs 76 g against 113 g for a regular stick.

That ratio is the swap rule. To replace a regular cup of 227 g with whipped butter you need about 1.5 cups, since 227 divided by 151 is 1.50. Going the other way, a recipe written for whipped butter needs two thirds of a cup of block butter where it says one cup. Ghee runs the opposite direction: the water is cooked out, so the same cup holds more butterfat, weighs 205 g, and carries 1,796 kcal.

Why a scale beats the cup measure

Butter by volume is honest only when the butter is firm and the cup is packed with no air pockets. Soft butter smears against the side and leaves gaps. Cold butter sits in chunks with air between them. Either way the cup can be off by a tablespoon or more while the wrapper still says 8 tablespoons per stick.

The wrapper is the reliable part of the volume system. US sticks are printed with 8 tablespoon marks, and a level tablespoon weighs 14.2 g, so slicing on the marks gets you 16 tablespoons and 227.2 g for the cup, within a rounding error of the USDA figure. Past half a stick, the scale wins, because a heaping tablespoon can hold 20 g and a recipe that calls for 16 of them never asked for 320 g.

Melted butter adds one more trap. Pour it into a cup measure and a film clings to the sides, so the recipe receives less than you measured. Weigh the solid butter before the pan and the melting changes nothing but the shape.

Calories, fat and salt in a cup of butter

USDA FoodData Central lists butter at 717 kcal per 100 g with 81.1 g of fat, of which the majority is saturated, and 16.2 g of water. Scaled to the cup, that is 1,628 kcal, 184.1 g of fat and 102 kcal per level tablespoon. Half a cup, 113.5 g, is about 814 kcal.

The salt column separates the two supermarket kinds. Salted butter carries 643 mg of sodium per 100 g, which works out to about 1,460 mg in a cup, close to two thirds of a teaspoon of table salt. Unsalted butter lists 11 mg per 100 g, or 25 mg per cup, essentially a trace. That gap, not the weight, is why bakers keep both kinds in the fridge.

Federal law sets a floor under the word butter: the product must hold at least 80 percent milkfat by weight, as the FDA's labeling rules for butter claims reflect. Butter sits well above that floor at 81.1 percent fat, and ghee, with the water gone, reaches 99.5 percent.

Metric blocks, half batches and recipe math

American butter comes in 1 pound boxes of 4 sticks, and European recipes come written in grams, so the practical questions are block shaped. A 250 g metric block is 1.10 cups of butter. A US 1 pound box is 454 g, which is exactly 2 cups or 4 sticks.

Four amounts cover most kitchen situations. A recipe asking for 1.5 cups needs 340.5 g, so one 250 g block plus 90.5 g more, about 0.40 of a cup. Half of 1 cup is 113.5 g, one stick by weight. Doubling a recipe that uses 1 cup sends it to 2 cups, 454 g, one whole box, and halving it drops to 0.5 cup, 113.5 g, one stick with a pat left over.

Brown butter changes the math by leaving. Butter is 16.2 percent water, and browning drives that water off as steam, so a batch that starts at 227 g can finish about 16 percent lighter once the milk solids toast. Weigh butter before the pan, never after, and a recipe written for brown butter by weight has already budgeted for the loss.

Measuring mistakes this converter fixes

Calling a stick a cup. One stick is half a cup, 113 g. A recipe that wants 1 cup, 227 g, gets half the butter if you stop at one stick, and cookies spread or cake turns dry for exactly that reason.

Using a regular cup for whipped butter. A whipped cup weighs 151 g against 227 g, so the recipe gets 76 g less butter than it asked for, more than a third. Convert by weight or use the 1.5 cups rule from the table above.

Trusting heaping tablespoons. A level tablespoon is 14.2 g and 16 of them make the cup. Heaping ones can hold 20 g each, which turns 227.2 g of careful math into 320 g of guesswork.

Confusing the two ounces. A cup of butter is 8 fluid ounces by volume and 8.0 ounces by weight, but that agreement is special to butter. A cup of flour is 8 fluid ounces by volume and about 4.4 ounces by weight, so the two units are not interchangeable anywhere else in the kitchen.

Guessing at metric blocks. A 250 g block is 1.10 cups, not 1 cup and not 2 sticks plus a tablespoon. The calculator at the top of this page does the division for any amount, including the awkward thirds.