With the holidays right around the corner, we often turn to old family recipes to carry on delicious traditions we love. Sometimes heirloom recipes call for butter the size of a walnut, a gill of flour, a pennyweight of cinnamon and salt spoon of granite sugar. What do these antiquated measurements mean? Let us demystify old world recipes with our vintage kitchen measurements chart!
Antique & Vintage Kitchen Measurements
Kitchen Charm
I love old recipes. All of them sound very farmhouse-y, calling for butter the size of a hen’s egg, yeast cake, sugar loaf, entire wheat flour and wineglassfuls of fresh squeezed juice, all mixed and baked in a quick oven. I once fumbled through an old Czech sweet bread recipe, converting yeast cake to packets and figuring out what citron was. (Thank goodness for the internet, right?) These by-gone measurements may make little sense today but it does evoke very romantic images of country life!
It’s All About Appearances
When using cups, tablespoons and descriptions of size, you are measuring ingredients by volume, as opposed to weight. This is a common way to cook because it is very visual and easy to remember. Likewise you’ll find it common that old recipes call for something the size of a hazelnut (1 tsp) or knob (2 Tbsp) because a visual representation was sitting nearby in the kitchen already, including the actual cabinet knobs!
Cups are not Cups
The old fashioned metal measuring cups used when your recipe was written may actually be imperial measuring cups. They are about 1/5 larger than the US cup we use today. This isn’t much of an issue because the difference is only 2.9 Tablespoons. This means great-grandmother’s level cup and our heaping cup aren’t too terribly far off. Simply scoop a rounded heap of ingredients in today’s standard measuring cup and the old recipe should turn out fine. If you’ve already tried that and it was a disaster, use a level cup. (Keep in mind that if you now live at sea level and are making the same recipe great-grandma made at a higher altitude, the liquid-to-dry-ingredient ratios will need a little tweaking any ways.)
What Does Scant and Heaping Mean?
Scant means the measuring cup or spoon is not all the way full and heaping means it is over-full with a rounded top. This is generally calculated as scant being 1 cup minus 2 Tablespoons and heaping being 1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons.
Why Such Cottage-like Measurements?
In times gone by, common kitchen utensils were used in place of standardized measuring cups and measuring spoons, which did not yet exist. Regular teacups and eating spoons sufficed because they were similar enough, only made by a handful of manufacturers. A cook was expected to know how a batter or dough should actually look and adjust the recipe as needed before baking. The recipe – called a receipt – was helpful in getting the measurements close enough. Here is a glimpse of what vintage measurements equate to using our standard measuring cup sizes today:
Foods Were Packaged Differently
It is no secret that foods produced by the household were not packaged at all and thus had no uniform size. Butter was a home-churned lump, yeast sponge was a foamy liquid kept in any size jar and loaf sugar was a hard-packed, nine or ten pound cone that one cut and used to make granulated, powdered or confectioner’s sugar by grinding it with a mortar and pestle. Granite sugar is loaf sugar crushed to the particle size of sand, just like the granular sugar we use today. Hazelnut, walnut, knob and egg size references were perfectly acceptable among cooks sharing recipes. Our vintage equivalencies will take the guesswork out of these charming old ingredient measurements:
Wood Burning Ovens had no Thermometers
Gas ovens were not common until the early 1900’s and electric ovens did not begin to compete with them until the late 1920’s. For recipes older than a hundred years, you are likely to be told to bake it in a moderate oven (350°) or perhaps a quick oven (375°-400°). Our handy oven temperature chart will keep you from scorching the pastry or burning the house down:
Download the 4×6 Recipe Card Size Vintage Kitchen Measurements Here
What a fun history lesson vintage kitchen measurements can be! I hope you enjoy these printable conversion cards and that they serve you well for many years to come!
P.S. You can download our original measurement conversion chart here!
Lorraine Nelson says
Love this page! Can you tell me what is a measure of sugar and like amount of butter and flour?
I’m looking at an old, old recipe for chocolate sponge cake.
Tay Silver says
Hi Lorraine!
If an old recipe directs you to use a “measure of sugar and a like amount of butter and flour”, this means you should use the same measuring tool for all 3 ingredients. So if you use 1/2 cup of sugar, you should also use about 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup flour. It is not exact, and bakers would have understood this a hundred years ago, so it is more important that your batter be in a consistency that would bake up properly as opposed to being exact in your measurements.
Susan Grace Milligan says
What is the to-day measurement for 1 PART ?
Tay Silver says
Hi Susan!
One “part” means that you should use an equal amount of two or more ingredients in a 1-to-1 ratio. So 1 part flour to 1 part sugar could be achieved by using 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of sugar OR 1 Tablespoon flour and 1 Tablespoon sugar. If you are looking at an old recipe that calls for a “part” of an ingredient, sometimes the amount of the ingredient above it can give you a clue. For example, a gill of cream and 1 part sugar. Use the gill measurement (1/2 cup) for the sugar as well. If this does not work, look at the ingredient after it. If they are both dry ingredients, like flour and sugar, it may be you need the sugar and flour to be in equal amounts. It may take some experimenting with the recipe but this should get you close!
Nancy says
Very interesting
Joyce W Canfield says
A very old recipe calls for the flour to be dried. Can you explain?
Tay Silver says
Hi Joyce!
I am guessing that just-harvested grain that would have been freshly milled might be moist. Drying was probably done in a pan sitting near a wood burning oven. If the flour happens to be a sprouted grain flour, the sprouts would need to be dried and then milled. I hope this helps with your neat old recipe!