You are halfway through a recipe with the wrong measuring cup in your hand. Here is the number, and then the six searches that usually follow it.
The answer is simple. The reason your bake still came out wrong is not.
Eight fluid ounces in one US cup — so half a cup is 4 fl oz and a quarter cup is 2 fl oz. That holds for any liquid, whatever it is.
A fluid ounce measures volume; an ounce measures weight, and for anything that is not water they are different numbers. A cup of water weighs 8 oz, but a cup of flour weighs about 4¼ oz — barely half.
The spoon conversions, which come up the moment you halve a recipe.
Sixteen tablespoons in a cup, so a quarter cup is 4 tbsp and a third is a slightly awkward 5 tbsp plus a teaspoon. That last one is why recipes avoid thirds.
Three. It is the conversion you will need most often and the one most easily done wrong in a hurry — a tablespoon of baking powder where a teaspoon was meant is a ruined cake.
The bigger containers, and the tool that makes all of this unnecessary.
Four cups in a quart, two cups in a pint, and sixteen cups in a gallon. The chain is easy once you see it: cup, pint, quart, gallon each double or quadruple the last.
They hold the same volume but are built for different jobs: liquid cups have a spout and headroom so you can carry them level, dry cups are filled and swept flat. Measuring flour in a liquid cup is how people end up 20% over.
About 120–125 g, though it swings by 20% depending on whether the flour was scooped or spooned. This is the number that ends the argument — a scale removes the whole category of error.
These are US customary measures. A UK or Australian cup is a different size, and a recipe written by weight will always beat one written by volume — which is the point step 2 is making.
You just walked 7 searches for “how many ounces in a cup”. The extension maps the trail right on your results page — for anything you search, not just the journeys we’ve written.