2 Cups of Butter in Grams

Two cups of butter is 454 grams

Two US cups of butter weigh 454 grams, because one cup weighs 227 grams in the USDA portion list for butter. That single number carries the rest of the conversion: 454 g is four sticks, 32 tablespoons, 16 ounces by weight and one pound box, and the same measure is 473 milliliters of volume.

The arithmetic is one line: 2 x 227 = 454. The calorie row comes from the same record, which lists 717 kcal per 100 g, so 454 g x 7.17 = 3,255 kcal. The milliliters are volume, not weight, and they come from a different multiplication: 2 x 236.588 = 473.2, because a US cup holds 236.588 mL.

Recipes written in grams and recipes written in sticks describe the same box. A pound of butter is four sticks, and each stick is half a cup, so a recipe asking for 2 cups is asking for the whole box. Nothing is lost in the conversion as long as you know which cup the writer had in mind, and that is where most of the confusion on this page starts.

Cups to grams for the amounts recipes call for

Most recipes land on the same handful of fractions, so a short table covers nearly everything. Every row below uses 227 g per cup, multiplied by the fraction.

Two of those rows are worth working out longhand, because they come up in almost every American baking recipe. One and a half cups: 1.5 x 227 = 340.5 g, which is three sticks. Three quarters of a cup: 0.75 x 227 = 170.25 g, or one and a half sticks, or 12 level tablespoons.

Fractions that do not divide evenly produce decimals, and a kitchen scale reading 75.7 g for a third of a cup is not a mistake. It is 227 / 3 = 75.67, rounded. Round to the nearest gram when you weigh and the recipe will not notice, since a tablespoon of butter is 14.2 g and nobody measures a third of a tablespoon.

Bigger batches scale the same way. A double recipe needing 4 cups takes 908 g, which is two boxes. A triple batch needing 6 cups takes 1,362 g, or three boxes, and at that point weighing is a good deal faster than counting sticks.

Where the 227 gram cup comes from

The number is a portion, not a physics constant. The USDA FoodData Central record for salted butter, FDC 173410 (2019) lists one cup at 227 g, one stick at 113 g and one tablespoon at 14.2 g in the same household measure list. Those three figures are not independent measurements of a cup: they are the divisions of a quarter pound stick, which is the package shape American butter has been sold in for a century.

Run the density calculation instead and you get a lighter cup. Butterfat has a specific gravity near 0.911, and 0.911 x 236.588 = 215.5 g. That is 11.5 g under the official figure, a gap of about 5 percent. Whole butter is not pure fat, though: 16.2 percent of it is water, which is denser than fat, and a cup packed the way a baker packs brown sugar lands heavier than a cup poured loosely.

For cooking, the portion wins. The wrapper is printed with marks at each tablespoon, the sticks are molded to a quarter pound, and the USDA figure follows the wrapper rather than a laboratory displacement test. Anyone converting 2 cups of butter should use 454 g and not 431 g, which is what two density based cups would give.

The one time the density figure matters is when you melt the butter and measure the liquid. Melted butter fills the cup completely, with no air gaps and no wrapper to guide you, so a cup of melted butter is a slightly different amount of fat than a cup of solid butter. Weigh the solid piece and then melt it, and the question disappears.

A metric cup is not a US cup

The word cup means three different volumes depending on who printed the recipe. NIST's Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8 (2008 edition) puts a US customary cup at 236.588 mL, which is eight US fluid ounces. A metric cup, used in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and much of Europe, is 250 mL. FDA guidance on metric equivalents of household measures (1993) sets the labeling cup at 240 mL, a round number adopted for nutrition panels rather than for baking.

Each row scales the USDA cup by the volume ratio. For the metric cup: 227 x 250 / 236.588 = 239.9 g, so two of them weigh 479.7 g, which most people round to 480 g. For the label cup: 227 x 240 / 236.588 = 230.3 g, and two come to 460.5 g.

That 25.7 g difference between a US pint sized measure and a metric one is about two tablespoons of butter, enough to change a shortbread or a pound cake at the margin. An Australian recipe asking for 2 cups of butter wants about 480 g, and an American cook weighing 454 g will be slightly short. Going the other way, a 480 g requirement needs 480 / 227 = 2.11 US cups, so measure 2 cups plus a scant tablespoon and a half.

British recipes usually skip the problem by listing butter in grams or in ounces, and older ones use a pound or half pound. When a recipe gives both a cup measure and a weight, trust the weight every time, because the writer weighed it once and the cup is an approximation of that weight.

Sticks, tablespoons and the marks on the wrapper

American butter comes in quarter pound sticks, and the paper wrapper is printed with eight tablespoon marks. That makes the stick the most reliable measuring tool in the kitchen: cut on a line and you have an exact fraction, with no scooping and no compressing.

Notice the half gram drift in that table. Four sticks weigh 4 x 113.4 = 453.6 g, while two USDA cups weigh 454 g. The two answers differ by 0.4 g, which is a rounding artifact in a system where a stick is exactly a quarter of a pound and a cup is defined as half a stick. Either number works in a recipe.

For 2 cups you need the whole box: four sticks, or 32 tablespoons, or 96 teaspoons. If a recipe asks for 2 cups and you have a one pound block rather than sticks, cut it in half, then in half again, and you have four pieces of 113.4 g each.

Tablespoons are the least accurate of these tools because a "heaping" spoon can hold half again as much as a level one. When a recipe gives tablespoons for butter, level the top with the back of a knife, or weigh 14.2 g per spoon and skip the argument.

Melted butter, ghee and brown butter

Melting does not change weight. Two cups of solid butter, 454 g, still weighs 454 g as a pool of liquid, because nothing has left the pan. What changes is volume: the crystal structure collapses, the water and fat separate, and the liquid no longer fills the same space in the same way. That is why a recipe says "2 cups butter, melted" and means weigh or cut first, then melt, rather than pour liquid to a line.

Ghee and clarified butter go further. Simmering butter drives off water and strains out milk solids, and the yield is roughly 180 to 190 g of ghee from 227 g of butter, so 2 cups of butter yields about 370 g of ghee. Ghee also weighs about 205 g per cup, against 227 g for whole butter, which is why a cup for cup swap in a recipe makes the dough shorter and richer.

Browning takes the same path with more heat. Butter is 16.2 percent water by the USDA record, and browning drives most of that off, so 454 g of butter ends up near 380 g of brown butter with a nutty smell and a darker color. The losing weight is water, not fat, and the flavor compounds that develop are the reason to do it.

One practical rule covers all three cases: when a recipe gives a weight, use the weight, and when it gives a volume after melting, melt more than you think you need and measure the liquid in a jug at eye level.

Salt, water and what does not change the weight

Salted and unsalted butter weigh the same per cup. The salt works out at about 1.6 percent of the total, and the USDA record for salted butter lists 643 mg of sodium per 100 g, so 2 cups carry about 2,919 mg of sodium, more than a day's worth for most adults. That is the whole difference between the two products on the shelf, and it does not move the gram conversion by a measurable amount.

European style butters sit at 82 percent fat instead of 81, and cultures added for flavor change the taste rather than the weight. A cup of an 82 percent butter weighs about the same 227 g, because the water and fat swap places in nearly equal measure. What does change is how the dough behaves: a drier butter makes a crumblier shortbread and a taller croissant.

Water content also explains why butter burns. The 16.2 percent water boils off at 100 C, and once it is gone the fat heats past its smoke point quickly. For frying at high heat, use ghee or oil rather than whole butter, and keep whole butter for finishing and for baking.

Swapping 2 cups of butter for oil or applesauce

Substitutions are where the gram conversion earns its keep, because the ratio is never one to one. Butter is about 81 percent fat and 16 percent water, so replacing it with a pure fat means using less, and replacing it with a watery fruit puree means using more.

The kitchen rule for oil is three quarters of a cup for every cup of butter, which puts 2 cups at 1 1/2 cups of oil. A stricter fat for fat balance gives a slightly larger number: 454 g of butter carries 454 x 0.811 = 368 g of fat, and at 0.918 g per mL that is 401 mL, or 1.7 cups. The kitchen rule leaves a little richness on the table and a little structure in the crumb.

Applesauce is a partial swap, not a full one. Replace up to half the butter by volume, so 2 cups of butter becomes 1 cup of butter plus 1 cup of applesauce. A cup of unsweetened applesauce weighs 244 g, which is 17 g more than the butter it replaces and brings water and sugar of its own, so reduce the liquid in the recipe by a tablespoon or two.

Coconut oil behaves like butter in baking because it is solid at room temperature, and 1 1/2 cups of melted coconut oil weighs about 327 g at 218 g per cup. Ghee is the closest swap by flavor and the furthest by water content, and it browns faster than butter for the same reason.