Fresh herbs and aromatics in grams: parsley, cilantro, basil, chives, scallions, garlic, shallots, ginger and zest compared

A US cup of a fresh leafy herb weighs a ninth to a third of what a cup of minced shallots does: about 18 grams for roughly chopped cilantro, 48 grams for snipped chives and 160 grams for minced shallots. Leaves trap air and stay light however they are cut; alliums, ginger and citrus zest are cut or grated into small, moist pieces that pack, and the finer the cut, the heavier the spoon.

All weights are for a US cup of 236.5882365 ml; a tablespoon is a sixteenth of it and a teaspoon a forty-eighth. The scale puts every figure on one axis of grams per cup. A range means the sources disagree by more than this site’s tolerance for that kind of ingredient, so no single figure is chosen. King Arthur’s figure is shown where this site records one, with the verdict on it. Each ingredient’s own page has every source and the full reasoning.

Fresh leafy herbs are among the lightest things measured by the cup. Their leaves are thin, springy sheets that hold each other apart, so a cup of chopped herbs is mostly air: about 18 grams for roughly chopped cilantro, 18.7 grams for whole basil leaves pressed down slightly, 32 grams for roughly chopped parsley and 48 grams for snipped chives. Every one is published as a range, because how firmly the cup is filled and how finely the leaves are cut change the weight two- or threefold. When America's Test Kitchen had 26 cooks measure a cup of basil leaves, the lightest cup weighed 10 grams and the heaviest 29.

Chopping finer makes the cup heavier. USDA weighs a cup of chopped basil at 42.4 grams against 24 for whole leaves, and its finely chopped parsley at 60 grams against 20 for the school Food Buying Guide's chopped curly parsley. Chives sit at the top of the herbs because short hollow rings pack more evenly than flat pieces of leaf, and America's Test Kitchen's finely minced chives weigh 56.7 grams a cup.

Scallions, shallots and garlic are firm, moist and cut small, and they pack far tighter. Chopped scallions weigh 100 grams a cup, with USDA, its Food Buying Guide and Norway's health directorate within 6.1 percent; thinly sliced green rings, which keep their hollow, weigh 57 to 64 grams. Minced shallots weigh 160 grams a cup, 10 grams a tablespoon. Garlic minced by hand weighs 2.8 grams a teaspoon by USDA, with the Culinary Institute of America within 5 percent, while jarred minced garlic in water weighs 5 grams, because the liquid fills the gaps between the pieces.

Grated zest and ginger are measured by the spoon. Lemon and orange zest both weigh 2 grams a teaspoon and 6 grams a tablespoon, loosely packed: USDA and Rose Levy Beranbaum agree exactly for lemon. Grated ginger is a wet pulp that fills most of the spoon, 4 grams a teaspoon by the Culinary Institute of America, while sliced ginger, coins that leave large gaps, weighs 96 grams a cup.

King Arthur Baking's chart has two rows here that read fluid ounces as weight ounces: minced garlic at 2 tablespoons = 1 ounce = 28 grams, and sliced ginger at a quarter cup = 2 ounces = 57 grams. Both make the ingredient nearly as heavy as water, 0.95 and 0.96 grams per millilitre, against 0.57 for minced garlic and 0.41 for sliced ginger, and both are rejected. Its chives at 42 grams a cup, sliced scallions at 64 and sliced shallots at 156 agree with the other sources.

For a garnish, the spoon is close enough. For pesto, tabbouleh, salsa, chutney and vinaigrettes, where an herb or an aromatic is a main ingredient, weigh it: a recipe's 2 cups of basil leaves can mean 20 grams or 58.