Dried thyme

For dried whole leaves (as sold in jars), spooned and leveled, one US cup of dried thyme weighs between 38.4 and 48 grams (1.4 to 1.7 ounces), depending on how the cup is filled and which source measured it. Use 43.2 grams (1.5 ounces) as USDA weighs a tablespoon of dried leaves. Every figure behind it is below, with the method each source used.

Ground, spooned and leveled: 68.8–82.5 g (2.4–2.9 oz) per cup.

Also called thyme, thyme leaves, dried thyme leaves, whole thyme leaves, ground thyme.

Dried herbs compared: cup weights side by side, the source behind each, and why they differ.

A teaspoon of dried thyme leaves weighs about 0.9 g, and a cup between 38 and 48 g (1.4 to 1.7 oz); ground thyme weighs about 1.4 g a teaspoon. USDA's tablespoon of leaves, 2.7 g, is the working figure, and labels and a bulk seller land within a fifth of it either way.

Dried thyme is the small, whole dried leaf of common thyme, Thymus vulgaris, sold in jars as "thyme leaves" and used in stews, soups, roast chicken, stuffing, gumbo and French and Cajun blends. Its leaves are tiny and fairly thick, so it is sold whole rather than crushed. Ground thyme, a fine powder, is sold for rubs and blends.

USDA's record gives a teaspoon of leaves at 1.0 g and a tablespoon at 2.7 g. The tablespoon is the more precise of the two, because a teaspoon rounded to a tenth of a gram can be off by 5%; it works out to 43.2 g a cup, 0.9 g a teaspoon. Two labels weigh the teaspoon themselves: Spice Islands at 1 g and Simple Truth at 0.8 g. Frontier Co-op counts 11 cups of its whole organic thyme leaves to the pound, 41.2 g a cup. Those figures run from 38.4 to 48 g a cup, 25% apart, past the 10% this site allows for spices, so the page shows the range with USDA's tablespoon as the working figure.

Two figures are listed without a value. Herbco counts its cut and sifted thyme at 7 cups to the pound, 64.8 g a cup, and Chef's Resources gives the same 7 to the pound for thyme leaves. Cut and sifted thyme is chopped into smaller bits than the whole leaves in a jar, and smaller bits pack tighter, so that figure describes a different cut.

Ground thyme splits too. USDA's tablespoon of ground thyme weighs 4.3 g, 68.8 g a cup, while Herbco's and Frontier's thyme powder, at 5.5 cups to the pound, comes to 82.5 g. Bulk powder settles in a bag, which may explain part of the gap.

King Arthur Baking's chart has no thyme row.

The physical check: thyme leaves are among the densest dried herb leaves, small and thick rather than broad and papery, so a spoonful of them weighs more than a spoonful of crushed basil (0.7 g) and about the same as crushed oregano (1 g). Grinding thyme into powder lets the particles fill the spoon's gaps, and USDA's ground teaspoon, 1.4 g, is about half again heavier than its whole-leaf teaspoon.

Practical guidance: use 0.9 g per teaspoon of dried thyme leaves, 2.7 g per tablespoon and about 43 g per cup; use 1.4 g per teaspoon for ground thyme. A recipe that calls for a teaspoon of dried thyme means leaves unless it says ground; if you only have ground, use about two thirds as much by volume. For blends and brines measured in grams, weigh: the cut makes a real difference.