Honey in grams, and why the cup lies most here

Honey weighs 339 grams to the US cup, and a tablespoon 21. It is half again as heavy as water, but the weight is not the problem. Honey clings to whatever measures it, so the cup you pour out is never the cup you poured in.

Why honey is the worst thing to measure by volume

Scoop a cup of flour and the error is how hard you pressed. Pour a cup of honey and the error is what stays behind, coating the cup in a film you cannot fully scrape out. The more you chase it with a spatula, the more you smear it somewhere else. That is why the USDA is the only authority that publishes a whole cup of honey at all, while King Arthur gives a tablespoon and stops: a spoon of honey you can at least rinse clean, and its 21 grams is the number both of them trust. When a recipe leans on honey, a scale is not a nicety, it is the difference between the amount you meant and the amount that reached the bowl. The reasoning behind that stance is on the methodology page.

Honey conversions in full

Density used: 1.43 g per ml, against water's 1.00.

Set honey weighs more than runny honey

Honey that has crystallised in the jar packs denser than the liquid it started as, so the same spoon carries more of it. Roskachestvo, the Russian standards agency, weighs crystallised honey at 35 to 40 grams on an 18 millilitre spoon against about 30 grams for liquid honey on that same spoon. Warm a set jar back to runny before you measure, or weigh it and skip the question, since the crystals shift the number before your hand ever does. That 18 millilitre spoon is the Slavic standard rather than the metric one, a distinction tablespoon sizes by country untangles.

Honey around the world

The heavier the ingredient, the wider the cups spread. A metric 250 millilitre cup of honey is 360 grams, and the Japanese 200 millilitre cup is 280, each from its own tables rather than scaled from the US figure. Honey is one of the few ingredients where a Japanese cup is worth stating on its own, because at this density the arithmetic error from scaling would run to tens of grams.

Questions about honey weight

How many grams is a cup of honey?

339 g, from the USDA, the only authority that publishes a whole cup of honey. It is heavy, about 1.4 times the weight of the same cup of water.

How much does a tablespoon of honey weigh?

21 g. King Arthur and the USDA both publish this one, and King Arthur stops there rather than give a cup, which is a fair hint that a cup of honey is hard to measure well.

Does crystallised honey weigh the same as runny honey?

No. Set honey packs denser: Roskachestvo weighs crystallised honey at 35 to 40 grams a tablespoon against about 30 for liquid on the same spoon, so the state of the jar changes the number before you do.

Sources

USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy for the 339 gram cup, King Arthur Baking and the USDA for the 21 gram tablespoon. The Kagawa Nutrition University standard tables, as reproduced by Benricho, for the 280 gram Japanese cup. Australian Women's Weekly for the metric cup, and Roskachestvo for the crystallised-honey weights. Full citations on the sources page.