Cooking Conversions

Cooking and baking American recipes in France requires all kinds of conversions, and not just the most obvious ones. In general, all volumes and weights need to be converted into metric - that much we knew before we got here. But what we didn't expect was that we'd also have to convert volumes into weights, and vice versa. That is, because of our limited selection of measuring cups, it's usually easier to figure out the weight of a volume than it is to measure out that volume. Example: one cup is 240 mL, and with 100, 50, 15, and 5 mL measuring scoops, that means two scoops of 100 mL, then approximating 40 mL in the 50 mL scoop, or trying to scoop slightly fewer than three full 15 mL scoops. So tedious! With our electronic scale, measurement is not only easier - it's also more precise.

We've put together a list of the some of the most useful conversions (most of which come from allrecipes.com):

1 cup = 240 mL

1 cup white flour = 120 g

1 stick butter (1/2 cup) = 113 g

1 cup granulated sugar = 196 g

1 cup brown sugar = 220 g

Tablespoon = cuillière à soupe

Teaspoon = cuillière à café

This website calculates based on whatever you plug in, rather than forcing you to do the math yourself: http://www.france-property-and-information.com/cooking_converter.htm

And finally, since our oven is marked in Celsius, we've had to look up the Celsius-to-Fahrenheit conversions (since we're too lazy to do it in our heads). We're actually lucky our oven shows Celsius - many European ovens show a "gas mark" instead of a temperature. Crazy! Examples:

Fahrenheit            Celsius          Gas Mark
275                       135              1
300                       150              2
325                       165              3
350                       175              4
375                       190              5

And if all conversions and recipes fail, we can always make something "au pif" - by feel, by guesstimate, by eyeballing things. That usually works out just fine.