Sorghum Syrup

One US cup of sorghum syrup weighs 336 grams. Going the other way, 100 grams is about 0.30 cups.

Also called sorghum syrup, pure sorghum syrup, sweet sorghum syrup, sorghum molasses, sorghum, long sweetening.

TL;DR: 336 g/cup (1.42 g/mL). USDA reference and multi-brand retail data converge within 2% at 330-336 g/cup, placing sorghum syrup squarely in the 336 g/cup density family alongside honey, agave syrup, barley malt syrup, and golden syrup. King Arthur is silent on this ingredient — it's a Southern US traditional sweetener outside the chart's coverage.

Sorghum syrup is boiled sweet sorghum juice: the stalks of sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor, a grass related to corn but not to sugarcane) are crushed to extract a bright green juice, which is then heated in open pans until it thickens and concentrates to a dark amber syrup at roughly 77% solids. The finished product is a natural single-ingredient sweetener with a distinctive earthy, mineral-forward flavor — less bitter than blackstrap molasses, less floral than honey, with a slight grassy edge that reflects the sorghum plant's origin. Peak US production was in the 1880s when sorghum syrup was the dominant Southern sweetener; industrial sugar refining collapsed the market by 1920, but small producers in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Pennsylvania have kept the craft alive through cooperatives like the National Sweet Sorghum Producers and Processors Association.

The density data converges tightly. USDA FoodData Central entry 169662 lists 1 cup = 330 g and 1 tablespoon = 21 g (these two figures are internally inconsistent by 1.8% — 21 × 16 = 336, not 330 — which is a common rounding artifact in USDA legacy entries where cup and tablespoon are separately rounded). The retail aggregate across six brands including Aunt Sue's, Oberholtzer's, Alaga, Hilltop Gardens, Miller's, and Bourbon Barrel Foods reports 1 teaspoon = 7 g, extrapolating to 336 g/cup — matching the USDA per-tablespoon-derived figure exactly. Physical density prediction from composition (76.7% carbs at ~1.53 g/mL, 23.3% water at 1.0 g/mL) gives 1.41 g/mL, or 333 g/cup. All three approaches land within 2% of each other — this is a high-confidence single-figure ingredient.

The nomenclature disambiguation is where sorghum syrup earns most of its search intent. Sorghum syrup is frequently called "sorghum molasses" in the Southern US, but it is not molasses in the technical sense. Molasses is a byproduct of sugar cane (or sugar beet) refining — the dark, mineral-rich fraction left over after crystalline sugar has been extracted. Sorghum syrup is a whole boiled plant juice with no sugar-extraction step. The two products look and pour similarly (both viscous, dark, roughly 75% solids) and taste similarly to non-specialists, but they come from unrelated plants (Saccharum officinarum for cane molasses versus Sorghum bicolor for sorghum syrup) processed through fundamentally different methods. This is the same distinction as maple syrup versus cane molasses — both dark natural sweeteners, neither is the other. Also worth distinguishing: sweet sorghum (the cultivar grown for syrup) is a separate variety from grain sorghum, which is grown for its seeds and used as gluten-free flour or livestock feed. The queue's sorghum-flour and this entry come from the same botanical genus but different cultivars grown for opposite ends of the plant.

Within the syrup category, sorghum syrup at 336 g/cup and 1.42 g/mL sits in the same physical density cluster as honey (336), agave syrup (336), barley malt syrup (336), golden syrup (336), and the physical density of brown rice syrup (336). All are concentrated plant-derived sugar solutions at 76-80% solids, and all reach the same density band regardless of source plant (cane, agave, barley, corn, sorghum) because sugar-water thermodynamics governs the final concentration at which the syrup sets. The 320 g/cup cluster (date syrup, pomegranate molasses, maple cream) sits slightly lower at 65-85% solids with different acid or fat content shifting the density; sorghum syrup does not join that cluster despite the "molasses" naming.

For baking, sorghum syrup substitutes 1:1 by weight for molasses in most recipes — gingerbread, cookies, baked beans, barbecue sauce — with a slightly milder, less bitter flavor. Direct substitution for honey is also 1:1 by weight, with the caveat that sorghum's earthy mineral notes read as savory rather than floral. In Southern breakfast tradition, sorghum syrup is drizzled straight onto biscuits, cornbread, pancakes, and grits, where its assertive flavor and heavy body distinguish it from the lighter maple and pancake syrups more common outside the region.