Imperial teaspoon to Imperial cup

One imperial teaspoon equals approximately 5.919 mL — slightly larger than the US teaspoon (4.929 mL) and the metric teaspoon (5 mL).

An imperial teaspoon is approximately 5.92 mL; a metric teaspoon is exactly 5 mL. The metric teaspoon is now standard in UK cooking, medicine, and pharmacology.

The imperial teaspoon is obsolete in modern UK, Australian, and Canadian cooking, which all use the 5 mL metric teaspoon. It may appear in cookbooks published before the 1970s metrication period.

A culinary pinch — the amount you can hold between thumb and forefinger — is roughly 0.3–0.5 mL, or about 1/16 of a teaspoon. Professional recipe developers have measured this and found surprising consistency across people: the human fingertip geometry constrains how much fine powder you can grip. A "dash" (liquid) is about 0.6 mL, and a "smidgen" is half a pinch (~0.15 mL). These folksy terms survive in recipes because they map to real, repeatable volumes — within the tolerance that salt and spice measurements actually require.

The WHO recommended the 5 mL metric teaspoon for medication dosing in the 1970s to eliminate ambiguity between imperial (5.92 mL), US (4.93 mL), and other teaspoon sizes. A calibrated 5 mL oral syringe is now the recommended tool for all liquid medicines.

One imperial cup equals approximately 284.1 mL — half an imperial pint (568 mL). This is larger than both the US legal cup (240 mL) and the Australian metric cup (250 mL).

The imperial cup is largely obsolete in modern UK cooking, which now uses metric measurements. It may appear in old British recipe books published before the 1970s metric changeover.

An imperial cup (284.1 mL) is about 18% larger than a US legal cup (240 mL). When using old British recipes in the US, 1 imperial cup ≈ 1.18 US cups — worth adjusting in baking.

Modern British recipes use metric measures: milliliters (mL) for liquids and grams (g) for solids. The BBC and major UK food publishers phased out cup measures in favor of grams through the 1970s–1990s.

There are 16 imperial cups in one imperial gallon (8 pints × 2 cups/pint = 16 cups).