Maple syrup

One US cup of maple syrup weighs 322 grams. Going the other way, 100 grams is about 0.31 cups.

Also called pure maple syrup, Grade A maple syrup, Vermont maple syrup.

Sources agree within 3.2%, inside the 5% tolerance for the syrup category. USDA FDC 169661 gives a cup at 322 g (1.361 g/ml) and a tablespoon at 20 g, and 20 times 16 gives 320 g, a 0.6% internal spread that reflects USDA rounding on the smaller measure. The cup figure is used as the more reliable of the two.

King Arthur's Ingredient Weight Chart gives 156 g per half cup, implying 312 g per cup or 1.3187 g/ml. Maple syrup is a concentrated sugar solution, boiled from the sap of sugar maple trees until it reaches roughly 66 to 67 percent sucrose by weight. That composition sets its density: sugar solutions above the saturation point are always denser than water in proportion to their sugar content, so any pure maple syrup product will sit between about 1.32 and 1.37 g/ml at room temperature.

Both sources fall inside that range, and the small disagreement between them likely reflects the natural batch-to-batch variation in evaporation endpoint rather than a measurement error on either side. Under the Federal Grade A standard, maple syrup must have a minimum density of 66.9 degrees Brix when finished, which corresponds to 66.9 percent sucrose and a density of approximately 1.325 g/ml at 20 Celsius. Producers commonly boil slightly past this minimum to give the syrup a safety margin against microbial spoilage, which pushes real-world density higher than the legal minimum.

This is why bottled retail maple syrup typically weighs closer to USDA's 322 g per cup than to the legal Grade A floor. Maple syrup is fundamentally different from honey despite being visually similar. Honey publishes at 339 g per cup on this dataset because its sugar content is higher (about 80 percent versus 66 percent) and its water content correspondingly lower.

This dataset lists them as separate entries and separate densities for that reason, and recipes that substitute one for the other by cup volume will not weigh the same. Grade classifications changed in 2015 in the US and Canada. What was previously Grade A (Light Amber, Medium Amber, Dark Amber) and Grade B (very dark, robust flavour) has been consolidated into Grade A with four color subclasses: Golden Delicate, Amber Rich, Dark Robust, and Very Dark Strong.

All four subclasses have the same minimum density under the grade standard, so the color and flavour differences do not translate to differences in cup weight. Table syrup and pancake syrup marketed under brand names like Aunt Jemima, Log Cabin and Mrs. Butterworth's are a different product entirely.

These are typically high-fructose corn syrup based with maple flavouring, some diluted with 2 to 15 percent real maple syrup, and their density depends on the specific formulation rather than on any maple syrup standard. USDA lists these separately at FDC 169657 and related records. No standards body publishes a bulk density figure for maple syrup, only the Brix minimum for Grade A.

The correspondence between Brix and density is well established in the sugar industry via the ICUMSA tables, but this is a derivation rather than a published measurement and does not qualify as an independent source under rule 3. Two sources agreeing within category tolerance, so this entry publishes a single figure and is held at medium confidence until an independent third is found.