Convert pints to US cups

The pint is a unit of volume in the customary system, and the same word covers three separate measures. The US liquid pint holds 473.176473 millilitres[1] and it is the pint printed on a cream carton and an ice cream tub[2]. The imperial pint holds 568.26125 millilitres[3] and it is the one a British or Irish pub pours.

The third measure is the dry pint of 550.6104713575 millilitres[3]. It measures dry goods and soft fruit, and it descends from the dry gallon, a separate parent unit inside the American system.

The cup is the American kitchen measure of 236.5882365 millilitres. NIST states its relation to the ounce as an exact one: one cup is eight fluid ounces[1]. There is no culinary measuring cup based on the imperial system[4]. The American, food label and metric cups each appear on their own in the cups to millilitres converter.

You pick the measure with the Pint type switcher under the converter fields. The switcher starts on US liquid, the pint American recipes use for liquids. The reverse calculation is handled by the cups to pints converter.

One US liquid pint is exactly two cups. The equality falls straight out of the two definitions NIST publishes: a cup is eight fluid ounces and a liquid pint is sixteen[1]. The same arithmetic makes half a pint one cup and two pints four cups.

A dry pint holds 550.61 millilitres and therefore turns the same number of pints into more cups. One dry pint is 2.327 cups. Two dry pints come to 4.655 cups, which is what you get out of two baskets of blueberries from an American store.

An imperial pint holds 568.26 millilitres and gives 2.402 cups. That figure applies to recipes and packaging from the United Kingdom and Ireland. Eight imperial pints reach 19.215 cups.

Multiply the number of pints by two and the answer is in cups. Three pints from a recipe give six cups. Seven pints give fourteen cups. The multiplier comes out round because the cup was defined as half a liquid pint.

The other two measures carry their own multipliers. Multiply a dry pint by 2.3273. Multiply an imperial pint by 2.4019. Both numbers come from dividing that pint's volume by 236.5882365 millilitres, the volume of the American cup.

The input field takes plain fractions and mixed numbers, so 1/2, 5/6 and 1 1/2 go in exactly as the recipe writes them. One and a half liquid pints give three cups.

The neighbouring measures in the same series are handled by the pints to quarts converter and the cups to fluid ounces converter.

A pint of fruit bought in the United States is a dry pint, so it comes to 2.327 cups. Two baskets give 4.655 cups and four baskets give 9.309 cups.

That measure has a legal footing. The Standard Container Act of 31 August 1916 fixed the capacities of baskets for small fruit, berries and vegetables, and it is where the dry pint entered the produce aisle[7]. A dry pint occupies 33.6003125 cubic inches, which is 550.61 millilitres[3].

The basket holds a fixed volume, while the weight inside it depends on the species and on how tightly the fruit settled. A recipe calling for two cups of blueberries therefore describes fruit measured in a cup.

When you move from baskets to cups, set the Pint type switcher to US dry. The result then refers to the capacity of the basket.