Tabasco sauce

One US cup of Tabasco sauce weighs 240.5 grams (8.5 ounces). Going the other way, 100 grams is about 0.42 cups.

Also called Tabasco, Tabasco pepper sauce, Tabasco Original Red, Tabasco red pepper sauce, Tabasco hot sauce.

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

A cup of Tabasco sauce weighs about 240.5 g (8.5 oz), only a little more than water. Tabasco's 60 mL bottle holds 61 g, and Australia's food standards table, at 1.04, agrees within 2.3%. USDA's generic hot sauce figure, 4.5 g a teaspoon, is lighter than water and is rejected.

Tabasco is the original Louisiana pepper sauce, made by McIlhenny on Avery Island from three ingredients: distilled vinegar, aged red pepper mash and salt. It is thin and sharp, used by the drop or the dash in Bloody Marys, oysters, eggs, chili, gumbo and marinades. Recipes for sauces, dressings and cocktails sometimes measure it by the teaspoon or tablespoon, which is where its weight matters.

The best figure comes from a European distributor sheet. Pomona's technical sheet for the 60 mL glass bottle gives a net weight of 0.061 kg, with the ingredients vinegar, red pepper (19%) and salt. 61 g in 60 mL is 1.0167 g/mL, 240.5 g per US cup. The net weight is given to the gram, so the figure carries about 1% of rounding. Food Standards Australia New Zealand's table of specific gravities, compiled from published values, lists Tabasco sauce at 1.04, 246.1 g a cup. The two are 2.3% apart, inside the 5% this site allows for liquids. This site publishes Tabasco's own bottle.

USDA's ready-to-serve "pepper or hot" sauce record weighs a teaspoon at 4.5 g, 216 g a cup and 0.91 g/mL. That is lighter than water. Every pepper sauce of this type is vinegar with peppers and salt in it, and both make a liquid heavier, not lighter; a teaspoon of water alone weighs 4.9 g. USDA's record covers hot sauce in general rather than Tabasco, but no vinegar sauce can weigh 0.91 g/mL, so the figure is rejected.

King Arthur Baking's chart has no hot sauce row.

The physical check: distilled vinegar weighs about 1.01 g/mL. Tabasco adds 19% red pepper, which brings fibre, a little sugar and salt from the pepper mash's long ageing, and more salt besides. A thin sauce with a few percent of dissolved salt and suspended pepper solids should weigh 1.02 to 1.04 g/mL, which is where both sources put it. Thicker, saltier Louisiana-style hot sauces and sauces with garlic or sugar weigh more per spoon; this figure is for Tabasco's original red sauce.

Practical guidance: use 240.5 g per cup, 15 g per tablespoon and 5 g per teaspoon. In practice Tabasco measures like water. Its bottle is made for drops, so for recipes that need a tablespoon or more, pour it into a measuring spoon rather than shaking. A dash from the bottle is a small fraction of a gram, so a recipe that counts dashes is counting heat, not weight.

The following published figures for Tabasco sauce are rejected here, with the physics or standards reasoning behind each rejection on its own page:

• USDA SR Legacy "Sauce, ready-to-serve, pepper or hot" (NDB 6168): 216 g per cup