Fresh ginger: why 228 g per cup is wrong
King Arthur Baking Ingredient Weight Chart publishes 228 g (8 oz) per US cup of fresh ginger. This site rejects that figure and publishes 96 g (3.4 oz) instead, from USDA SR Legacy "Ginger root, raw" (FDC 169231) (density 0.4058 g/mL, matching the composition of the substance). The reason:
A quarter cup is two fluid ounces, and King Arthur gives it as two ounces by weight, 57 g: the fluid ounce read as a weight ounce, which puts sliced ginger at 0.96 g/mL, as if the cup held solid ginger with no gaps. Fresh ginger is about as dense as water, and slices tipped into a cup lie at every angle and fill well under half of it: USDA weighs a quarter cup of 1-inch slices at 24 g, 96 g a cup (0.41 g/mL).
The arithmetic
| Source | 1 cup | Density | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| King Arthur Baking Ingredient Weight Chart | 228 g8 oz | 0.9637 g/mL | Rejected on physics |
| USDA SR Legacy "Ginger root, raw" (FDC 169231) | 96 g3.4 oz | 0.4058 g/mL | Published here |
The 227-gram pattern
The figure 227 is 8 × 28.35 — the conversion for weight ounces (avoirdupois). It is applied to volume in fluid ounces without going through the substance’s density. For a substance that happens to have a density of about 0.96 g/mL, the answer would be right; for water, milk, yogurt, cream, buttermilk, pumpkin purée, ricotta and evaporated milk, all of which are denser than water, it is wrong. The same number 227 appears on the King Arthur chart for every one of these ingredients, which is the signature of an arithmetic pattern rather than a measurement.
The full list of 227-gram rejections is on the corrections page.
The published figure and its sources
The full sourcing for fresh ginger, including every accepted and rejected figure, the state or filling method behind each, and the physics or standards reasoning applied, is on the ingredient page.
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