Tablespoon sizes by country, and a standard that was quietly withdrawn

A tablespoon holds 15 millilitres in Britain, New Zealand, Germany and Japan, 14.8 in the United States, 18 in Russian and Ukrainian recipes and 20 in Australia. Only one of those differences is big enough to wreck a dish on its own, and the paperwork behind it has expired.

Every spoon we hold

Volumes from our unit registry, each with its own source.

The Australian spoon, and the standard that is not one

Australia is the only country still writing its recipes to a 20 millilitre tablespoon, 33 percent over the 15 millilitres most of the metric world settled on, and four teaspoons rather than three. The table above already shows 15 as the common standard rather than a universal one, with 14.8 in the United States and 18 in Slavic kitchens. Australia is the one place whose recipes are written to 20. That much is true and well known. What gets repeated and is no longer accurate is the phrase "the Australian Standard". The 20 millilitre figure is quotable from AS 1325, but the edition that states it is the 1972 one, which has been superseded, and the 1997 successor has been withdrawn with nothing put in its place. There is no Australian Standard currently in force defining the tablespoon.

That does not make the spoon less real. Australian recipes are written to 20 millilitres and Australian cooks use it daily; it is a living convention with no document behind it. The distinction matters for how confidently anyone should assert it, which is why we checked rather than repeating the phrase, and it comes with a practical sting: Australian kitchenware shops commonly sell 15 millilitre spoons while Australian recipes assume 20, so owning an Australian cookbook does not guarantee owning an Australian spoon. The rest of an Australian recipe, the metric cup and the leaveners this spoon throws off, is on Australian recipe measurements.

The Slavic 18 ml spoon, with a warning from its own publishers

Roskachestvo publishes 18 millilitres as the standard Russian tablespoon and 15 as the less common size. Ukrainian sources are more cautious still: pro100media tells its own readers that the standard spoon is 15 millilitres and that large dining spoons run 18 to 20, so check yours. Anyone converting a Slavic recipe should treat 18 as the likely intent and verify rather than assume. The verification is the water test in the questions below, and the same grid of ingredients at both 15 and 18 millilitres sits on heaped versus level spoons.

Why the American spoon is an odd number

The US tablespoon is 14.8 millilitres because it is defined as exactly half a US fluid ounce, and the fluid ounce is what it is for historical reasons rather than tidy ones. American recipes round it to 15 and nothing breaks: the difference is 1.4 percent, far under the error introduced by how you fill the spoon. This is the one place on this site where we are comfortable saying the distinction does not matter in a kitchen.

Japan is safe on spoons and risky on cups

Japanese recipes use osaji at 15 millilitres and kosaji at 5, which match the metric tablespoon and teaspoon exactly. So a Japanese recipe's spoons need no conversion at all for a European cook. The danger in a Japanese recipe sits entirely in the cup, which is 200 millilitres against the American 236.6, and that gap is the subject of cup sizes around the world. German recipes behave the same way: EL at 15 and TL at 5 are the metric pair, and a bare EL always means a level spoon.

The spoons that are not tablespoons

Older British recipes use a dessertspoon, 10 millilitres, sitting between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, and a reader meeting the word today has no way to guess it. French recipes use cuillere a soupe and cuillere a cafe, and a coffee spoon at 2.5 millilitres is half a teaspoon rather than an alternative name for one. Neither survives into modern recipe writing, which is precisely why they catch people out in old cookbooks where no glossary is provided. The Brazilian ladder keeps all four, colher de sopa down to de cafe, on Brazilian recipe measurements.

Volume is only half of it

Knowing your spoon holds 15 millilitres still does not tell you what a tablespoon of flour weighs. Published charts put a level tablespoon of flour anywhere from 7 to 20 grams at that same volume, and the heap adds another factor on top. The grid and the reasons for that spread are on heaped versus level spoons, and per-ingredient figures with named authorities are on the ingredient pages.

Questions about tablespoon sizes

Is an Australian tablespoon bigger than mine?

Yes, 20 ml against the 15 most metric kitchens use, about 33 percent more. Your own spoon may be neither: the American one is 14.8 ml and Slavic tables give 18. It is also four teaspoons rather than three, which is the quickest way to check a spoon you are holding.

Does the American 14.8 ml matter?

Barely. It is defined as exactly half a US fluid ounce, which is where the awkward decimal comes from, and it sits 1.4 percent under a metric spoon. How level you make the spoon moves the contents further than that.

How do I tell which tablespoon I own?

Fill it with water and weigh it: a millilitre of water is about a gram, so an 18 ml spoon holds about 18 g. Roskachestvo recommends exactly this test, and it settles the question in one go.

Two more foreign-recipe puzzles have their own pages: the bare number on the oven dial, on oven temperatures, the type number on a flour bag, on flour types; and what a cup costs you when you own no scale, on measuring without scales. Every foreign measure we cover is indexed on the world measures hub.

Sources

NIST for the US tablespoon, Edmonds for the New Zealand spoon, Standards Australia's catalogue for the status of AS 1325 and its withdrawn successor, Roskachestvo for the Slavic spoon and the water calibration test, pro100media for the Ukrainian caution, Dr. Oetker for the German EL and TL, and the Kagawa Nutrition University tables for osaji and kosaji. Full citations on the sources page.