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Half-and-Half: why 227 g per cup is wrong

King Arthur Baking Ingredient Weight Chart publishes 227 g per US cup of half-and-half. This site rejects that figure and publishes 242 g instead, from USDA FoodData Central (density 1.0229 g/mL, matching the composition of the substance). The reason:

Fluid-oz-as-mass-oz error (8 × 28.35 = 227) compounded by scope error grouping heavy cream, light cream, and half-and-half under one figure despite physically distinct densities.

The arithmetic

Cup weight, implied density, and how it compares to water (1.000 g/mL) for half-and-half.
Source	1 cup	Density	Status
King Arthur Baking Ingredient Weight Chart	227 g	0.9594 g/mL	Rejected on physics
USDA FoodData Central	242 g	1.0229 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 half-and-half, 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.

Half-and-Half — full sources and conversion table

All corrections · How sources are checked · Cite this page

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