I have been looking at curry recipes on an American web site and it gives measurements in teaspoons and tablespoons. I am not familiar with these measurements as we do not use them locally.
Does teaspoon/tablespoon refer to the size of the spoon or its purpose?
If I have spoons that measure only mL, how can I convert a teaspoon/tablespoon measurement to these?
It's actually understandable why this would be confusing to non-Americans, because the terms "teaspoon" and "tablespoon" actually have two meanings - one in cooking and one in dining.
Historically, teaspoons and tablespoons were simply two types of silverware. Teaspoons were literally for stirring tea or other liquids. Tablespoons were used for serving. So yes, the terms actually do refer to the purpose of the spoon.
They are also now used as cooking measurements across most of North America and possibly other regions:
For future reference, I use Google as my go-to resource for unit conversions whenever I don't know or can't remember the exact ratios. For example, you can type the phrase 2 tbsp in mL directly into the search box and it will give you the answer (29.57 mL).
You can normally use the guideline that 1 teaspoon is equal to 5 ml and 1 tablespoon is equal to 15 ml. However, do make sure that the website is American and not Australian, as the tablespoon measurement as used in that country equals 20 ml.
There's a helpful table comparing the definition of the teaspoon and tablespoon measurements as used in different English-speaking countries on this Wikipedia page (in the section "Metric measures"):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_weights_and_measures
Though your specific question was about a modern website, others looking into this question may need to keep in mind that teaspoon and tablespoon measures can vary widely in older books published in different countries or even in the same country. I found a blog post with a list of examples for the tablespoon measure from different books varying from as little as 12.5 ml to as much as 25 ml:
- Margaret Powell (British) 1970 Tablespoon = 18 ml
- Australian and New Zealand Complete cooking 1973 = Tablespoon = 25 ml
- Best of Cooking (Hamlyn) - Tablespoon, (Australia) = 20 ml
- Best of Cooking (Hamlyn) - Tablespoon, (British) = 17,7 ml
- Best of Cooking (Hamlyn) - Tablespoon, (America) 14,2
- Indian Cooking, Chowhary 1952 - = Tablespoon = 25 ml
- Cook and Enjoy, De Villiers 1971 (South Africa) = Tablespoon = 12,5 ml
- Complete South African Cookbook (South Africa) 1979 Tablespoon = 12,5
- The Australian Women's weekly 1978 = 20 ml
(Source: http://whitegranny.blogspot.com/2008/11/beware-of-tablespoon.html)
And, though again this is probably not relevant to your specific question, it's interesting to note that in Dutch recipes "a teaspoon" refers to a 3 ml measurement, while "a coffee spoon" refers to a 5 ml measurement. (Source: http://www.dekooktips.com/wegen-meten.htm, in Dutch)
American standard spoon measurements are:
Tablespoon: 14.8ml (about 15ml)
Teaspoon: 4.93ml (about 5ml)
They say 3 tsp (teaspoon) is equal to 1 tbsp (tablespoon).
In Japan, we use "large" or "small" for measurement spoons, but they work the same (large = table spoon, small = tea spoon).
