Cooking from a Spanish-language recipe, and the cup that changes by country

Una taza is the least dependable word in a Spanish-language recipe. It is 200 millilitres in a traditional Spanish book, 250 in Argentina, 240 in Mexico, and the pocillo beside it swings further still. Spanish and Latin American recipes share a language and not a cup, so the first thing to settle is not the quantity but the country.

The taza, by where the recipe was written

There is no single Spanish cup. Spain's own traditional recipe books lean on a 200 millilitre taza, while modern Spanish baking blogs have mostly adopted the American 240 millilitre cup and say so on the page. Mexico uses that same 240. Argentina, Chile and most of the rest of Latin America use 250, the metric cup. The breakfast cup you would drink from, the taza de desayuno, holds about 250 millilitres as an object, which is where the Latin American figure comes from.

A taza of flour is not one weight either. A modern 240 millilitre Spanish taza holds about the 120 grams an American cup does; a 200 millilitre Spanish one holds less and a 250 millilitre Latin American one more, but not in the tidy proportion the millilitres suggest, because flour does not pack linearly, which our Japanese page shows against measured tables. The vessels themselves, with the full Spanish ladder from copita to taza de desayuno, sit on cup sizes around the world. The rule for the whole page follows from this table: settle the country, then weigh.

Pocillo: the word that flips

If the taza is unreliable, the pocillo is treacherous, because it names two different objects. In Spain and in Argentina a pocillo is the little cup an espresso comes in, roughly 55 to 60 millilitres. In Colombia a pocillo is a mug, about 150 millilitres, the cup you drink a full coffee from. That is a factor of more than two on the same word, so a Colombian recipe asking for un pocillo de aceite and an Argentine one asking the same are not close. When a recipe uses pocillo as a measure, the country is not a detail, it is the conversion.

The vaso, and the cake that measures itself

A vaso, a drinking glass, turns up as a measure across the whole Spanish-speaking world and runs about 200 to 250 millilitres depending on the glass, the vaso de agua being the larger end. Its most famous use is the bizcocho de yogur in Spain, the torta de yogur 1-2-3 in Argentina: you empty a 125 millilitre pot of yogurt, then measure the flour, sugar and oil with the same pot or a vaso, one part yogurt to more of each. It is the Spanish-Latin cousin of the French gateau au yaourt, and it works the same way and hides the same catch, that a pot holding 125 grams of yogurt holds only about 50 grams of flour. The method, and why the grams of a pot are disputed, is on French recipe measurements, which owns it.

The parts that do transfer

Not everything shifts. A cucharada is a tablespoon and a cucharadita a teaspoon, the metric 15 and 5 millilitres, so they carry to an American drawer unchanged, and every spoon sits on tablespoon sizes by country. Argentine recipes write cc where a European writes ml, and a cc is exactly a millilitre, so 200 cc de crema is 200 millilitres and nothing needs converting. And levadura is the false friend to watch: levadura de panaderia is yeast, levadura quimica or a sachet of Royal is baking powder, the same split French calls levure and Italian lievito, so reading one as the other leaves a cake flat.

Manteca is butter, or it is lard

One ingredient name splits the map in two. In Argentina and Uruguay manteca is dairy butter, the thing you spread on bread and cream into a cake. In Spain and Mexico manteca is lard, manteca de cerdo, and butter is mantequilla. So a Rio de la Plata recipe asking for 100 gramos de manteca wants butter, and the same three words in a Spanish or Mexican recipe want rendered pork fat, which creams, bakes and tastes nothing alike. When a recipe says manteca, the country decides whether you reach for the butter or the lard; mantequilla is the safer word, because it means butter wherever it appears.

A recipe, decoded

Read a plain bizcocho, the sponge every Spanish-language kitchen makes, written the way a recipe leaves it. The first job is to decide the country, because two of these lines depend on it.

3 huevos

Three eggs. In Spain and most of Latin America that means the European medium to large band, which maps to American Large, on egg sizes.

1 taza de azucar

One cup of sugar. If the recipe is Spanish and old, about 200 ml of it; if Argentine, 250. Weigh it once you know which, because the cup itself is the variable.

1 taza de harina

One cup of flour. A 240 ml Spanish taza of it is about the 120 g of an American cup, a 250 ml Latin American taza a little more. Weigh it, since flour does not scale cleanly with the cup.

1 pocillo de aceite

A small cup of oil, and here the country decides everything: about 60 ml in Spain or Argentina, 150 in Colombia. Get this line wrong and the batter is soaked or dry.

1 sobre de levadura Royal

A sachet of baking powder, not yeast, despite the word levadura. Dosed for the flour in the bowl.

Two lines, the taza and the pocillo, cannot be read at all until you know where the recipe comes from, and one, the levadura, is a word that means two things. That is the shape of a Spanish-language recipe: the grammar travels, the measures do not.

Questions about Spanish and Latin American measurements

How many millilitres is a Spanish taza?

It depends on the recipe's country and age. Spanish traditional books lean 200 ml, modern Spanish blogs and Mexico use the American 240, and most of Latin America uses 250. A single word covering a 50 ml range, so read the origin before the taza.

What is a pocillo?

A small cup, and the one word here that changes size most. In Spain and Argentina a pocillo is an espresso cup, about 55 to 60 ml; in Colombia it is a 150 ml mug. "Un pocillo de azucar" in Bogota is more than twice the same line in Buenos Aires, so the pocillo needs its country before its contents.

Is a Latin American taza the same as an American cup?

Close in Mexico, which uses the 240 ml cup, but the Southern Cone uses 250, the metric cup, about 6 percent over the American 236.6 ml. Over several cups of flour that gap is a noticeable amount.

Sources

Corazon de Caramelo and The Gourmet Journal for the modern Spanish 240 ml taza and per-taza weights, guiademedidas and Mexican converters for the 200-versus-250 split, and Argentine and Colombian coffee references for the pocillo at 55 and 150 millilitres. The taza and cc come from our unit registry. Full citations on the sources page.