Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions.  We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

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• Cup Sizes

  Nigella sometimes suggests using a "cupful". How many ounces is a cup please? Many thanks, Angie Salisbury.

  Posted by angiemob. Answered on 13th Nov 2012 at 12.00

  From the nigella team:

  Nigella sometimes uses cups to measure ingredients as this can sometimes be easier than getting out a large pair of scales. We tend to give cup sizes as a measrue of volume rather than weight, as different ingredients will have different weights per cup, depending on their density.

  Nigella's own cups (and those in her Kitchen Kit range) have volumes of 1 cup = 250 mls/9 fl oz, 1/2 cup = 125 mls/4 1/2 fl oz, 1/3 cup = 80 mls/3 fl oz, 1/4 cup = 60 mls/2 1/4 fl oz.

  US standard cups have slightly different mesures, where 1 cup = 240mls or 8 US ounces, but generally the difference between the two types of cup is very small.

  In Kitchen Nigella sometimes refers to a "breakfast cupful" and again we would take this to be around 250mls. If you are hiving off a cupful of pasta cooking water before draining the pasta then the cup size doesn't really matter too much and you could just use a tea or coffee cup. The cooking water is added to the pan of pasta and sauce a splash at a time, just to help to loosen and emulsify the sauce, so you will only add as much as you need.

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