Pound

A pound (lb) is a unit of weight. It equals 16 ounces, or 453.6 g. American recipes use it for meat, fish, butter, potatoes and other produce, and sometimes for flour and sugar in large batches. The UK officially uses metric, but you still see pounds in older British recipes and at some markets. The abbreviation lb comes from the Latin libra.

Why it works

In recipes, a pound is always a weight. Some old sayings, like "a pint's a pound the world around", come from the fact that a US pint of water weighs about a pound. That only holds for water and liquids like it, so do not use it for flour or oil.

When you swap a metric pack for a US one, the difference is small for most cooking. A 500 g pack of pasta is 10 percent more than a 1 lb box, which does not change much. In baking, use a kitchen scale and weigh in grams for accuracy.

How to use it

For quick work, 1 lb is about 450 g, and 1 kg is about 2.2 lb.

Pounds	Grams
¼ lb (4 oz)	113 g
½ lb (8 oz)	227 g
¾ lb (12 oz)	340 g
1 lb (16 oz)	454 g
1½ lb	680 g
2 lb	907 g
5 lb	2.27 kg

Some useful things that weigh about a pound:

• 4 sticks of butter, which is one standard US box. See stick of butter.
• A standard US package of ground meat. European packs are usually 400 or 500 g.
• About 2 to 3 medium russet (baking) potatoes.
• About 3½ cups of all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled.

Common mistakes

• Thinking 1 kg is about 2 lb. It is 2.2 lb, so the error grows with size. A 5 kg turkey is 11 lb, not 10.
• Mixing lb and oz decimals. "1.5 lb" is 1 lb 8 oz, not 1 lb 5 oz.
• Reading "#" as a number sign. In some American recipes "2#" means 2 pounds.

In recipes

You will see "1 lb ground beef", "2 lbs bone-in chicken thighs" and "½ pound butter". Roasting times are often given per pound, for example "20 minutes per pound", which is about 45 minutes per kilogram.