cc to Grams Converter

What a cc is, and why it equals a milliliter

A cubic centimeter and a milliliter are the same volume. The cc is the older notation, and the mL is the name the metric system settled on in 1964. One cc is 0.001 liters, one mL is 0.001 liters, and no conversion factor sits between them.

That means a recipe written in cc and a nutrition label written in mL describe the same amount of space. What changes is the weight, and weight is what most American recipes ask for. The bridge between the two is density: grams = cubic centimeters x grams per cubic centimeter.

Water is the anchor at 1.00 g per cc, which is why 240 cc of water weighs 240 g and the two numbers look interchangeable. Nothing else in the kitchen is that obliging. A cup of all-purpose flour holds a little over half the mass of a cup of water, and a cup of honey holds about 43% more.

So the answer to "how many grams in 240 cc" has no single value. It has one value per ingredient, and the spread between the lightest powder and the heaviest syrup is close to a factor of four.

The one number that changes everything: density

Density is mass per unit volume, and in the kitchen it is set by two things: what the food is made of, and how much air is trapped in it. A cup of flour is mostly air. Tap the cup on the counter and the same flour settles into a smaller volume, which raises the density without adding a crumb.

This is why two bakers can measure a cup of flour and be 20% apart. Spooned gently into a cup and leveled, all-purpose flour lands near 125 g. Scooped straight from the bag with the cup, the same flour packs in and can reach 150 g. The recipe says one cup either way, and the dough notices.

For liquids the problem mostly goes away. Water, milk and oil pour and settle the same way every time, so their densities are stable to within a percent or two across the temperatures a kitchen sees. For powders, the gram figure is only as good as the fill method behind the density you pick.

The densities in this tool come from USDA FoodData Central household measures, divided by the 236.588 mL US cup that NIST defines in NIST Handbook 133. They are averages of a careful spoon and level, which is the method most baking writers assume.

Grams per cc for the ingredients people measure

The table converts each ingredient to grams per cc, then shows what a full US cup and a 250 mL metric cup weigh. The grams per cc column is the number the calculator uses.

Two entries are worth a second look. Butter sits just under 1.0 because it is about 80% fat and 16% water, so a 240 cc stick weighs less than 240 g. Honey sits well above 1.0 because sugar dissolved in water is denser than either one alone.

Rice is the outlier in the other direction. A cup of raw long grain rice is 185 g because the grains leave big gaps between them. Grind the same rice into flour and the density climbs toward 0.85 g per cc, which is why a recipe that swaps one for the other by volume goes wrong.

Worked example: 240 cc of four ingredients

One volume, four ingredients, four wildly different weights. This is the clearest way to see why the ingredient menu matters more than the number you type.

• 240 cc of water: 240 x 1.000 = 240 g
• 240 cc of all-purpose flour: 240 x 0.528 = 126.8 g
• 240 cc of granulated sugar: 240 x 0.845 = 202.9 g
• 240 cc of honey: 240 x 1.433 = 343.9 g

The flour weighs 53% of the water at the same volume, and the honey weighs 43% more. A recipe that treats a cup as a cup regardless of what is in it is asking for three different amounts of food.

Scale it up and the gap gets expensive. A 500 cc batch of flour is 264.2 g, while 500 cc of honey is 716.4 g. If you were building a cake and swapped those two by volume, the batter would be short by more than 450 g of liquid sugar.

The calculator handles any volume you type, in either direction. Put in 355 cc for a 12 oz can, or 59 cc for a quarter cup, and the grams follow the same density line.

The cup problem: 236.6 mL, 240 mL and 250 mL

There is no single cup. The US customary cup is 236.588 mL, fixed by NIST Handbook 133 as 8 fluid ounces exactly. The US nutrition label cup is 240 mL, rounded by the FDA nutrition label rules so that a serving reads cleanly. The metric cup used in Australia, Canada and New Zealand is 250 mL. The old imperial cup is 284.131 mL.

The metric cup is 5.7% larger than the US cup, and the imperial cup is 20% larger. On a single cup of flour that is 7 g and 25 g, which is the difference between a tender crumb and a dry one in a cake that only calls for two cups.

This is the reason a scale beats a cup for baking. A gram target does not care which cup the recipe writer had in the drawer, and a 250 mL cup in a US kitchen silently adds 5.7% to every dry ingredient in the list.

For liquids the gap matters less because a 5.7% error in milk rarely changes the outcome. For flour, sugar and cocoa it compounds across every cup in the recipe.

How to measure so the number holds

The density figures assume a spoon and level. That means fluffing the flour in its bag or canister, spooning it into the cup until it mounds over the rim, then sweeping the excess off with the flat back of a knife. Do not tap the cup, do not press, and do not scoop with the cup itself.

For brown sugar the method flips. Packed brown sugar is pressed into the cup until it holds the shape when turned out, which is why its density is 0.930 rather than the 0.60 or so of loose brown sugar. A recipe that says "brown sugar, packed" wants the pressed weight, and this tool assumes that.

Butter is easier. A US stick is 1/2 cup by volume and 113 g by weight, so four sticks are 454 g and one cup. If a recipe gives butter in tablespoons, one tablespoon is 14.2 g.

For anything past two cups, weigh it. A $15 kitchen scale resolves to 1 g, which is finer than any cup measurement of a powder can be, and it removes the fill method from the equation entirely.

Two habits make a scale easier to trust. Put the bowl on the scale, press tare, and add until the number matches, rather than weighing the ingredient in a separate cup and transferring it. And write the gram weights on the recipe card the first time a bake works, because the next bag of flour may be milled a little differently and the cup measure will drift while the gram target will not.

Liquids are the one place a cup still earns its keep. A glass measuring cup with a spout is easier to pour from than a scale is to read while holding a carton, and the density of milk or water is stable enough that a 5 mL miss changes nothing.

Going the other way, and the mistakes that cost a bake

To turn grams back into cc, divide by the density instead of multiplying: cc = grams ÷ grams per cc. A 500 g bag of flour is 500 ÷ 0.528 = 946.6 cc, which is almost exactly four US cups. The same 500 g of honey is 500 ÷ 1.433 = 349 cc, or about 1.5 cups.

The table below gives the forward direction for the volumes people type most often.

Three mistakes show up again and again. The first is treating cc and grams as interchangeable for anything but water. The second is using a coffee scoop or a serving spoon as a cup, when a "cup" of unknown size can be anywhere from 200 to 300 mL. The third is measuring a liquid in a dry measuring cup, which is marked to the rim and spills before it reaches the line.

One more: a recipe that lists milk in cc and flour in grams is not being inconsistent. It is telling you that the milk was measured by volume and the flour by weight, which is the combination a careful baker would pick anyway.