One of the most confusing aspects of cooking is measurement. TV chefs invent units on the fly such as a knob of butter or a glug of oil - how much is that? Many recipes do not need super accuracy when measuring ingredients but others, such as when baking a Victoria sponge, are less forgiving.

When reading a recipe, especially where Imperial measurements are used, one can be led astray very easily. A pint in the UK is about 1.2 pints in the US - a 20% discrepancy. A UK cup is about 284 ml whereas a metric cup is only 250 ml - a 13% discrepancy.

According to some conversion tables there are 8 fluid ounces in a cup. However, a cup is half a pint and there are 20 fluid ounces in a pint which implies that there are 10 fluid ounces in a cup - which is it?

One needs to try to determine where the recipe was created and to determine what measurement standard the author used. Once the standard has been determined, I suggest converting everything to the metric system because it is a standard that applies worldwide without significant variation. Where greater accuracy is required such as when baking, try to standardise on metric mass (grams) to measure your ingredients because settling or temperature can affect the accuracy of volumetric measurements.

On this site, we have used generally accepted South African measurements - which means that almost everything is metric.