Measuring cup
kitchen utensil to measure volume of cooking ingredients
A measuring cup is a kitchen utensil used primarily to measure the volume of liquid or bulk solid cooking ingredients such as flour and sugar, especially for volumes from about 50 mL (approx. 2 fl oz) upwards. Measuring cups are also used to measure washing powder, liquid detergents and bleach for clothes washing. Some measuring cups will have a scale marked in cups and fractions of a cup, and often with fluid measure and weight of a selection of dry foodstuffs. Others are made to a specific capacity and are designed to be filled to the top with dry ingredients.
Measuring cups may be made of plastic, glass, or metal. Transparent (or translucent) cups can be read from an external scale; metal ones only from a dipstick or scale marked on the inside.
Capacity and scale
Measuring cups usually have capacities from 250 mL (1 metric cup) to 1,000 mL (4 metric cups; about 2·11 US customary pints (1·06 US customary quarts) or 1·76 British imperial pints (0·88 British imperial quart)), though larger sizes are also available for commercial use. They usually have scale markings at different heights: the substance being measured is added to the cup until it reaches the wanted level. Dry measure cups without a scale are sometimes used, in sets typically of 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, and 1 cup.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Measuring cup” as kitchen utensil to measure volume of cooking ingredients. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 2, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q907099.
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This entry incorporates text from “Measuring cup” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.