Proper measurement can sometimes be a little confusing. Take the word liter, for instance. If you’re an American, then the word ‘liter’ is what you’ll use to describe this amount, but in the UK that same measurement is a ‘litre’.
That’s not so bad, since they sound similar, but while the customary answer to ‘how many cups of water is in a liter?’ is going to be ‘4’, there are times when that answer is not going to be correct.
Today we’ll talk about this a little so that you can see what we mean!
The answer really just depends on ‘where’ the cup is
That’s right. For most intents and purposes, if you are an American then a liter is going to be 4 cups. This will generally serve you if you are following a particular recipe, but where that recipe comes from might make an important and distinct difference in what is meant by a ‘liter’.
So, we’ll start with the basic assertion that a liter, for Americans, is 4 cups. Each cup is considered to be 250 milliliters, which means that a liter is equal to 1000 milliliters.
Easy peasy – unless you aren’t in America.
How many cups of water are a liter in Canada?
Canada is going to be a little different, as they are going with imperial standards, which will change both the word and the volume of the cups in question that make up the ‘litre’. With Canadian cups, instead of 4 cups making a ‘litre’, it is actually 4.40 cups!
How many cups of water are a liter in Australia?
Australians, by contrast, get us back to our original ‘4 cups is a liter’. While Australia uses mostly uses the metric system(with today’s metric known now as ‘The International System of Units’), they use some non-standard measurements as well. So, in Australia, 4 cups is once again 1 liter.
How many cups of water are a liter in Japan?
A liter in Japan is also going to be quite different. With Japanese ‘cup’ volume, a liter in Japan means 5 cups per liter. This is a very important distinction if you like to cook Japanese cuisine. So, if your cooking experiments have gone a bit awry, now you know the issue. Japanese liters are always going to be 5 cups instead of the American standard of 4.
Some closing words
So, there you have it! Today we’ve talked about the volume of measurement known as the liter. As you can see, liters can be sneaky, but as long as you know that the amount will directly relate to where the instructions are coming from then you should be okay.
If you are American then in most cases, you’ll just need to remember that there are 4 cups to a liter, but if you love cooking then it might just be a good idea to memorize the regional differences. Alternately, you could simply print out a conversion chart to stick on your fridge with a magnet.
That way you’ll always know the value of the liter all around the world!
