Why Your Australian Recipes Keep Coming Out Wrong (And How to Fix It)

The Tablespoon Problem Nobody Talks About

You follow the recipe exactly. You measure carefully. But the sauce is too thin, the biscuits are dry, the slice doesn't set. Sound familiar?

If you're cooking from Australian recipes — or cooking Australian recipes overseas — there's a measurement trap that catches almost everyone, including experienced cooks.

Australia uses a 20ml tablespoon. The rest of the world uses 15ml.

That's a 33% difference. And almost no recipe app, conversion tool, or cookbook bothers to tell you.

Why Australia Is Different

When Australia metricated in the 1970s, it standardised the tablespoon at 20ml — four teaspoons of 5ml each. The UK, US, and most other countries settled on 15ml (three 5ml teaspoons).

The result: every time an Australian recipe says "1 tablespoon", it means significantly more than a cook in London, New York, or Tokyo would measure out.

Where It Really Hurts

The difference matters most in baking, where ratios are everything:

• Baking powder and bicarb — 1 tbsp of bicarb in an Australian recipe is 20ml. Use a 15ml tablespoon and your cake won't rise properly.
• Cornflour for thickening — 33% less cornflour means a runny sauce or custard.
• Butter in pastry — less fat changes the texture entirely.
• Spices and salt — less impactful but still off.

For cooking (not baking) the difference is more forgiving — an extra splash of fish sauce or olive oil rarely ruins a dish. But for anything where chemistry matters, the gap is real.

The Cup Difference Too

While we're here: the Australian cup is 250ml, while the US cup is 236.6ml. That's less dramatic than the tablespoon gap, but it compounds in recipes that use both cups and tablespoons together.

A recipe calling for "2 cups and 3 tablespoons" has two regional measurement differences stacked on top of each other.

How to Fix It

If you're cooking an Australian recipe outside Australia: Multiply every tablespoon measurement by 1.33 (or add an extra third). So 3 tablespoons becomes 4 tablespoons in your local measure.

If you're outside Australia cooking a non-Australian recipe: Australian tablespoons are already larger, so you're likely adding more than intended. Use 3 of your teaspoons (15ml) to equal one standard tablespoon.

The easiest fix: Use KitchenConvert. When you set your recipe's cuisine to Australian, it automatically applies the 20ml tablespoon and 250ml cup to all conversions — so the maths is done for you.

A Real Example

Take a classic Australian Anzac biscuit recipe:

• 2 tablespoons golden syrup
• 1 tablespoon boiling water

In Australian measure: 40ml syrup, 20ml water. With a standard 15ml tablespoon: 30ml syrup, 15ml water.

That's 25% less liquid in the binding mixture — enough to produce a crumbly biscuit instead of a chewy one.

The Broader Picture

This is one of several regional measurement differences that affect recipe accuracy:

• Japanese recipes use a 200ml cup (vs 250ml metric)
• Old British Imperial recipes use a 284ml cup
• Dutch traditional recipes use a 150ml cup

Most recipe websites and apps ignore all of this and apply US measurements universally. For home cooks working across cuisines and countries, the result is recipes that are subtly — sometimes significantly — wrong.

KitchenConvert detects the recipe's cuisine and applies the correct regional measurements automatically. It's a small thing that makes a real difference.

The Short Version

If you cook Australian recipes: your tablespoon should be 20ml, not 15ml. If you cook non-Australian recipes in Australia: your tablespoon is bigger than the recipe expects. If you want it handled automatically: try KitchenConvert free →