Teaspoons to Grams

A teaspoon has no weight of its own

A teaspoon measures volume; grams measure weight. How many grams a teaspoon holds depends on what is in it: a level US teaspoon of granulated sugar weighs 4.17 grams, of table salt 6.08 grams, of ground cinnamon 2.6 grams. To turn teaspoons (tsp) into grams, multiply by the weight of one teaspoon of that ingredient.

The spoon here is the US teaspoon: 1/6 US fluid ounce, 4.93 ml, and by definition 1 US tablespoon = 3 teaspoons and 1 US cup = 48 teaspoons. Baking powder, baking soda, active dry yeast and ground cinnamon USDA FoodData Central weighs by the teaspoon itself; for everything else it gives a cup, and the teaspoon is 1/48 of it — a cup of table salt is 292 grams, so a teaspoon is 6.08 grams.

Three steps

1. Find the weight of one teaspoon of the ingredient — in the table below. For baking powder it is 4.6 grams.
2. Turn the recipe’s fraction into a number. 1/8 is 0.125, 1/4 is 0.25, 1 1/2 is 1.5 — or simply type the fraction into the calculator as the recipe writes it.
3. Multiply. 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder = 1 1/2 × 4.6 = 6.9 grams.

Grams in 1/4, 1/2 and 1 teaspoon of each ingredient

If the ingredient does not matter yet, start from how many grams 1 teaspoon is — every ingredient at once. The opposite question, how many teaspoons a weight fills, is on the grams to teaspoons page; tablespoons are on tablespoons to grams, cups on cups to grams.

Where this actually comes up

• Leavening on a scale.A teaspoon of baking powder is 4.6 grams; a recipe’s 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, 2.3 grams.
• Salt in bread. 2 teaspoons of table salt weigh 12.2 grams.
• Yeast. 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry yeast weigh 9 grams by the USDA teaspoon.
• Sugar for a drink.A teaspoon of sugar is 4.17 grams.
• Spices. 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon weighs 1.3 grams.
• Oil and honey. A teaspoon of olive oil is 4.5 grams, of honey 7.06 grams.

Where USDA’s own spoon weights differ

USDA FoodData Central also lists a teaspoon for some ingredients it weighs by the cup. This converter does not use those portions — they would make a teaspoon disagree with its own cup — but checks every one against the derived weight: 6 of them agree within 1.4 %, and a gap over 5 % would be named on the result page.

Baking powder and baking soda

A teaspoon of baking powder and a teaspoon of baking soda both weigh 4.6 grams in USDA FoodData Central. Equal weight does not make them interchangeable: baking soda needs an acid in the recipe and is several times stronger, so each keeps its own row and its own pages, and a recipe’s teaspoon of one is never a teaspoon of the other.

Water: a milliliter is a gram

1 ml of water weighs about 1 g, so a US teaspoon of water weighs its own volume, 4.93 grams. For water this calculator uses no table; the same number in milliliters is on the teaspoons to milliliters page. Every other liquid here — milk, oil, honey — uses its USDA weight, because a spoon of it is not a spoon of water.

Where the teaspoon and the gram come from

The teaspoon was the small spoon for stirring tea, which reached European tables in the 17th century. American cookbooks of the late 19th century, Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896 among them, made it a level measure, and the US teaspoon settled at 1/3 of a tablespoon, 1/6 of a fluid ounce. The gram was defined in France in 1795 as the weight of one cubic centimeter of water at the temperature of melting ice. Converting teaspoons to grams is how a recipe’s pinches meet a kitchen scale.

US or metric teaspoon

This page uses the US teaspoon of 4.93 ml. A recipe from the UK, Australia or most of the world means the metric teaspoon of 5 ml, 1.4 % more — close enough for cooking. Every result page names the metric figure on one line under the answer. The teaspoon by volume alone is on the teaspoons to milliliters and milliliters to teaspoons pages.

Doing it in your head

Three anchors cover most recipes: sugar about 4 g a teaspoon, table salt about 6 g, baking powder about 4.6 g. Multiples follow: 3 teaspoons of sugar about 12.5 g, 1/2 teaspoon of salt about 3 g, 2 teaspoons of baking powder about 9 g. For anything USDA weighs by the cup, divide the cup by 48: a cup of butter at 227 grams gives a teaspoon of 4.73 grams.

Where the weights come from

Every weight on this page except water’s comes from a household portion in USDA FoodData Central, the SR Legacy dataset (the final release of the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference), taken for a level spoon. Each result page names the exact entry — for table salt it is USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy entry 173468 “Salt, table”, portion “1 cup” = 292 grams, and 1 US cup = 48 US teaspoons. The same weights drive grams to teaspoons and, for the ingredients USDA weighs by the cup, grams to cups. A heaped spoon weighs more than a level one; for baking powder and yeast a kitchen scale is the exact answer.