US Legal Cups to Liters (cup (legal) to L)

1 US legal cup equals 0.24 liters exactly.

1 US legal cup = 0.24 liters

How to convert US legal cups to liters

To convert US legal cups to liters, multiply the number of US legal cups by 0.24. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply liters by 4.166666667 (rounded).

liters = US legal cups × 0.24

Example: 10 US legal cups = 2.4 liters.

Pints, quarts, gallons and fluid ounces differ between the US and the UK. Units are labeled 'US' or 'imperial' to avoid confusion.

About these units

US Legal Cup (cup (legal))

US customaryCurrent unit

Exactly 240 mL, the 'cup' defined by US food-labeling law.

Nutrition labels in the United States do not use the traditional cup. Federal law, tied to FDA labelling rules, defines the legal cup as exactly 240 mL, which is a round metric figure sitting close to the customary cup of 8 US fluid ounces (about 236.6 mL, as NIST lists it). The difference is about 1.4 percent, small enough to matter little for a serving size.

The metric cup of 250 mL, used in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and some other countries, is a separate, slightly larger measure, and the legal cup is about 0.96 of it. Older cups varied far more. The Japanese go was about 180 mL and was legally defined in 1891, the Russian stakan about 246 mL and the Dutch kopje about 150 mL. An 1894 British book described a cup as about 6 imperial fluid ounces. Without a stated standard, a recipe cup can therefore differ noticeably from country to country.

1 US legal cup = 0.24 liters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Cup (unit); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Liter (L)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One cubic decimeter (1,000 cm³). The everyday metric unit of volume for drinks, fuel and cooking.

The liter was born in revolutionary France. In 1795 it was introduced as a republican unit and defined as one cubic decimeter, while the gram was tied to a cubic centimeter of water. The name comes from the older French litron, itself descended from a Byzantine Greek unit of weight, not volume. A small revision of the decimeter in 1798 left the first liter about 1.000974 of today's cubic decimeter, and in 1879 the international metric authorities adopted the liter with the symbol l.

The liter then took a strange detour. In 1901 it was redefined as the space taken up by one kilogram of pure water at its densest, which made it about 1.000028 cubic decimeters, and that muddled definition lasted until 1964, when it was restored to exactly one cubic decimeter. A capital L was added as an alternative symbol in 1979 because a lowercase l is easy to mistake for the digit 1, and NIST says L is the symbol to use in the United States. A liter of water is close to a kilogram, which is why a one-liter bottle feels like a kilo in the hand.

The liter is the reference unit for volume on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Litre; NIST Guide to the SI, Chapter 5: units outside the SI

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