Canadian Law Defines a Peck. It Does Not Define a Cup.

Search the full text of the Weights and Measures Act for "teaspoon". You get nothing. For "tablespoon", nothing. For "cup", three hits, all of them inside the word "occupant".

Do the same in the Weights and Measures Regulations. Zero, zero, zero.

Meanwhile the Act does give a legal definition for the bushel (8 gallons) and the peck (2 gallons), units nobody has used in a domestic kitchen in a century.

This is not a curiosity. It is the reason you will find four different values for a "Canadian tablespoon" online, all confidently stated, none of them backed by anything. Here is what Canada actually measures with, and what you should write in a recipe.

What the Act does define

Schedule II, Canadian Units of Measurement, in full, for volume:

Unit	Legal definition	Metric
gallon	454 609/100 000 000 cubic metre	4.546 09 L (exact)
quart	1/4 gallon	1,136.5225 mL
pint	1/8 gallon	568.261 25 mL
gill	1/32 gallon	142.065 3125 mL
fluid ounce	1/160 gallon	28.413 0625 mL
fluid dram	1/8 fluid ounce	3.551 632 8125 mL

Plus bushel (8 gallons), peck (2 gallons), and the cubic yard, foot and inch. Item (l) of that list reads, literally, "[Deleted, SOR/86-854, s. 2]".

For mass: pound 45 359 237/100 000 000 kilogram, ounce 1/16 pound or 437½ grains, dram 1/16 ounce, grain 1/7 000 pound, ton 2 000 pounds, cental or hundredweight 100 pounds.

Two things worth noticing there. The "Canadian system" is not pure British imperial. The gallon and the fluid ounce are imperial, but the ton is 2,000 pounds — the American short ton, not the British long ton of 2,240 — and the hundredweight is 100 pounds, not the British 112. Canada mixed them.

And Measurement Canada closes the door explicitly. Its GEN-50 bulletin states that units of measurement not listed in Schedules I, II and III of the Act or Part VI of the Regulations are not legal for trade subject to the Act. Its Table 5 adds that US units are not legal for trade in Canada at all.

So the Canadian cup and the Canadian tablespoon are kitchen convention, not legal units. Which is exactly why nobody agrees on them.

One clarification before anyone panics: the Act governs trade by measure — what a shop may sell you a quantity of. It has nothing to say about what you write in a recipe. There is no illegal tablespoon. There is only an undefined one.

The only two places Canadian law does anchor a spoon and a cup

A teaspoon, in Part C of the Food and Drug Regulations — the drug part: "teaspoon means, for the purpose of calculation of dosage, a volume of 5 cubic centimetres; (cuillerée à thé)." That is medicine dosing, not cooking. It is still the only legal Canadian definition of a spoon, and it says 5 mL.

A cup, in Health Canada's Table of Reference Amounts — which the Food and Drug Regulations make mandatory for nutrition-facts serving sizes. Its cells read literally 1 cup (250 mL), 2 tbsp (30 mL), 4 tbsp (60 mL), 1 tsp (5 mL), 2 tsp (10 mL), 1/8 tsp (0.6 mL).

That is the answer. For a Mexican recipe written for Canada:

1 cup = 250 mL · 1 tablespoon = 15 mL · 1 teaspoon = 5 mL

Not 227.3. Not 236.6. Not 14.21.

The numbers that circulate, and where each comes from

Because you will meet them, and because someone will tell you you're wrong.

"Unit"	Where it comes from	Value
"Canadian" tablespoon	½ imperial fluid ounce	14.206 53 mL
"Canadian" teaspoon	⅓ of the above	4.735 51 mL
"Canadian cup"	8 imperial fluid ounces	227.3045 mL
Half imperial pint	10 imperial fluid ounces	284.130 625 mL
US tablespoon (real)	½ US fluid ounce	14.786 76 mL
US cup	8 US fluid ounces	236.588 24 mL

The 14.21 has a genuine history, and the best source on it is Quebec's own. The Office québécois de la langue française entry for cuillerée à soupe explains that before SI came in, English units were used in Canada, which is why Quebec uses the calques cuillerée à table / cuillère à table, "qui équivalent à une quantité d'une demi-once". Half an ounce: that is the 14.21.

And the same entry finishes the argument: since the adoption of SI in 1970, those terms designate the same volume as the cuillerée à soupe, which is 15 ml. The 14.21 is history. The 15 is the instruction.

One figure that does not survive at all: 17.758 mL. It is sometimes given as "one eighth of an imperial fluid ounce." That is arithmetically wrong twice over — one eighth of an imperial fluid ounce is the fluid dram, 3.5516 mL, and 17.758 mL is five eighths of an imperial fluid ounce, or 1/256 of an imperial gallon. We looked for any source calling that a Canadian or British tablespoon: not Schedule II, not the Regulations, not GEN-50, not the OQLF, not Wikipedia's own article on the tablespoon, which gives 14.2 mL for the British, 15 mL for the metric and modern American, 20 mL for the Australian, and does not mention Canada at all. Treat 17.758 as an error in circulation.

Three rounding traditions, all in use, none wrong

This is the part that trips people up, because they assume one of them is a mistake. They are different eras and different domains.

¾ cup is…	Source
188 mL	Health Canada, Table of Reference Amounts
180 ml	Ricardo (Quebec)
175 mL	Canadian Living (anglophone Canada)

And 2 tablespoons is 30 mL for Health Canada and Ricardo, and 25 mL for Canadian Living. That 2 tbsp (25 mL) is the house signature of the anglo-Canadian rounding inherited from the metrification of the 1970s and 80s.

Canadian Living's own guidance on this is the best advice in the whole subject: within a single recipe, follow either the metric or the imperial, and never mix them.

How Canadian recipes are actually written

In English Canada: imperial first, metric in brackets. 1 cup (250 mL), 2 cups (500 mL), 3/4 cup (175 mL), 1/4 cup (50 mL), 2 tbsp (25 mL), 1 tsp (5 mL), 8 cups (2 L).

In Quebec: metric first, imperial in brackets. From Ricardo's guacamole recipe: 1 ml (1/4 c. à thé) de sel, 30 ml (2 c. à soupe) de jus de citron, 1 pot de 170 ml de cœurs d'artichauts.

And the same site flips the order for its English edition: 2 tbsp (30 ml) lemon juice, 1 jar (6 oz/170 ml) oil-packed artichokes. Note that in English Ricardo writes "ml" with a lower-case L, not "mL".

Do they use grams? In Canadian home cooking, barely — volume rules. Ricardo gives masses for meat and cheese (454 g, 1 lb); Canadian Living works almost entirely in cups. Food labelling, by contrast, is 100% g and mL.

Ricardo's own liquid table, read in full: 25 ml = 1/8 tasse, 30 ml = 1 oz, 60 ml = 1/4 tasse, 75 ml = 1/3 tasse, 125 ml = 1/2 tasse = 4 oz, 150 ml = 2/3 tasse, 180 ml = 3/4 tasse, 250 ml = 1 tasse = 8 oz, 500 ml = 2 tasses = 16 oz, 1 L = 4 tasses.

A clash worth pointing out. Ricardo writes 250 ml = 1 tasse = 8 oz. But 8 imperial fluid ounces are 227.30 mL and 8 US fluid ounces are 236.59 mL. Neither is 250. The same table gives 30 ml = 1 oz against a real 28.41. Ricardo's "Impériales" column is a cooking approximation, not a conversion — which is fine, as long as you do not use it to convert anything.

The labelling rules, which are not the recipe rules

The CFIA sets the frame for packaged food: net quantity must be declared in metric; Canadian units are optional and go in addition, with the metric declared first and both grouped with nothing in between. The CFIA's own examples: 500 g net quantity / quantité nette 17.6 oz, and 114 ml 4 oz fl. US units are allowed only if identified as "U.S.", except the fluid ounce.

Two rules from that page are worth stealing for recipes anyway:

A single space between the number and the unit. The CFIA is blunt: "500 g is acceptable, whereas '500g', '500 g', and '500 g ' are unacceptable." Not glued, not doubled, no trailing space.

A decimal point, not a comma, in English: 0.980 kg, 17.6 oz.

And one rule you should not steal: the CFIA prohibits numerical fractions in metric — "⅛, ¼, ⅓, ½, ¾, ⅞ … must never be used to express metric measure." That governs labels, not recipes. In recipes, imperial fractions (1/4 cup, 1/2 tsp) are the absolute norm. Do not confuse the two registers.

Temperature

Canada is officially metric — the degree Celsius is in Schedule I of the Act — and Canadian domestic ovens ship set to Fahrenheit and can be switched to Celsius. Manufacturer manuals on Canadian domains say so directly: "The oven control is set to use Fahrenheit temperatures (F), but you can change it to use Celsius temperatures (C)."

The federal government publishes the other way round, °C with °F in brackets. Safe internal cooking temperatures: 71 °C (160 °F) ground meat, 74 °C (165 °F) poultry pieces, 82 °C (180 °F) whole bird, 63 °C (145 °F) medium-rare beef.

For Mexican cooking, using Ricardo's oven table — which is the Quebec standard and includes a gas thermostat position:

What you're doing	°C	°F on the dial
Drying chillies, gentle confit	160	320
Standard oven	180	350
Baking bread, roasting	190	375
Roasting vegetables, browning	200	400
Tatemar, gratinar, toasting chillies	220	425
Hard tatemar / broil	230	450

Those Fahrenheit figures are the dial numbers, not exact conversions: 180 °C is really 356 °F, 200 °C is 392 °F, 220 °C is 428 °F. Going the other way, 350 °F = 176.7 °C, 375 °F = 190.6 °C, 400 °F = 204.4 °C, 425 °F = 218.3 °C, 450 °F = 232.2 °C.

And a caution about that table. Ricardo's own chart lists 0 °C = 30 °F for the freezing point of water and -18 °C = -0.5 °F. Water freezes at 32 °F, and -18 °C is -0.4 °F. It is a cooking table with cooking rounding, and it is off by two degrees at the one point everybody knows. Use it for the oven, not for arithmetic.

One practical note that no conversion table covers: the comal has no thermostat. In a Canadian version of a Mexican recipe, describe it by physical signal — medium-high heat, until a drop of water dances — not by a number.

Writing it in Canadian English

We counted whole words, case-insensitively, in the full text of the Food and Drug Regulations, which is Canadian federal law in English:

Canadian	Count	American form
colour	61	color: 0
labelling	84	labeling: 0
flavouring	19	flavoring: 0
millilitre	13	milliliter: 0
gram / grams	25 / 103	gramme / grammes: 0

That last row settles a question people ask: in Canada it is gram, not "gramme", even though it is litre and metre. The Weights and Measures Act has litre 2, metre 11, liter 0, meter 0.

On "mL" with a capital L, the honest answer is that the law allows both. Schedule I, Part IV, lists the symbols for millilitre as "mL, mℓ or ml" and for litre as "L, ℓ or l". What is true is that Canadian federal practice writes mL consistently — the Food and Drug Regulations do it everywhere — and so does anglophone Canadian media. Ricardo, in French, writes ml. So "always mL" is real, recommendable usage, not a legal obligation.

Two vocabulary items verified in a Canadian source: icing sugar and all-purpose flour, both in Canadian Living — icing sugar being what the US calls powdered or confectioners' sugar.

And one that matters for Mexican cooking specifically: table cream 18% and whipping cream 35%. In Canada you ask for cream by its fat percentage, not by a name. That is why Mexican crema — soured, around 30% fat — has no direct shelf equivalent here.

Quebec French: two traps that will ruin a recipe

Trap one: "c. à t." does not mean what a French reader thinks.

The OQLF's Grand dictionnaire terminologique entry for cuillerée à soupe defines it as 15 ml and lists, among its preferred terms marked Québec/Canada: cuillerée à table, cuill. à t. and c. à t.

Its entry for cuillerée à café defines it as 5 ml and lists, marked Québec/Canada, cuillerée à thé, cuill. à thé and c. à thé.

So in Quebec, "c. à t." is an abbreviation of cuillère à TABLE and means 15 ml. A French reader will read it as cuillère à thé and use 5 ml — a third of what the recipe wanted. Write "c. à soupe" and "c. à thé" in full, never "c. à t." and never "c. à s."

Ricardo's own utensil table backs the terminology and is worth quoting because it labels the countries explicitly: 1 cuiller à thé (Canada) | c. à thé | 5 ml, 1 cuiller à café (France) | c. à café ou cc. | 5 ml, 1 cuiller à soupe (France, Canada) | c. à soupe ou cs. | 15 ml, 1 cuiller à table (Canada) | – | 15 ml.

Note also that the OQLF does not condemn à café in Quebec — it is a preferred term on the same entry. It is simply not idiomatic there.

Trap two: the French pinte is twice the English pint.

GEN-50 lays it out: in Canada, pint (English) = chopine (French) = 568.261 mL, but quart (English) = pinte (French) = 1,136.523 mL. The OQLF confirms it: its chopine entry defines the unit as 568 ml, marked Québec/Canada, symbol "chop", and notes that although pinte is widespread in Quebec restaurants for a 568 ml beer, the Weights and Measures Act prescribes chopine for that unit and reserves pinte for 1,136 ml.

This is the most expensive translation trap in Canadian cooking. Double or half, depending on which way you get it wrong.

The false friends, verified one by one

Every row below is from the OQLF's Grand dictionnaire terminologique or from Usito, the Université de Sherbrooke dictionary.

Quebec word	A French reader reads…	It actually means
piment	hot chilli	sweet pepper / poivron
blé d'Inde	—	maize / maïs
fève	broad bean	haricot, common bean
gourgane	—	broad bean / fava
crème sure	—	sour cream (France: crème aigre)
bleuet	myrtille	a different species, North American
atoca	—	canneberge, cranberry
chaudron	a cauldron	any pot with a lid
poêlon	frying pan	saucepan (frying pan is poêle)
déjeuner / dîner / souper	lunch / dinner / —	breakfast / lunch / dinner

"Piment" is the dangerous one for anyone cooking Mexican food, and Usito says so itself: it marks the usage Québec/Canada as the usual name for the piment à saveur douce or poivron, with the examples "Piment rouge, piment vert. Piments farcis" — and it carries an explicit note that the usage is criticised as a source of ambiguity, precisely because piment also names the hot kind. A Quebec recipe calling for un piment vert wants a green bell pepper.

And one that reverses across the language line. The OQLF's coriandre entry gives coriandre as the preferred French term and lists "cilantro" as a term to avoid in French. But on the English side of the same entry, "cilantro" is marked "Canada, États-Unis" and coriander as European. So: in Quebec French, coriandre. In Canadian English, cilantro. Same herb, opposite recommendations, one government office.

A small gift from the OQLF, and a good argument. It has a dedicated entry for guacamole (2023), saying the loanword is acceptable because it names a reality typical of Mexican culinary culture, that it is pronounced gwa-ka-mol, that it is also heard as feminine in Quebec, and that the plural is des guacamoles. That is Quebec's own language authority saying: do not translate the names of Mexican dishes. We agree.

Typography, where the authority and the practice disagree

The OQLF requires that unit symbols take no plural mark, be set in roman, and be separated from the number by a non-breaking space — and that espace insécable is feminine in typography, une espace. Its kilogramme entry adds: no abbreviation point, no plural, no italics, always a space. Its degree entries write the examples with a space and a decimal comma: (30 °C × 1,8) + 32 = 86 °F.

Ricardo, the biggest culinary authority in Quebec, writes 180°C and 350°F with no space and uses a decimal point in -0.5°F. It breaks both rules. We are recording that rather than pretending the standard is universally observed.

What we could not verify

The Translation Bureau's guidance, including The Canadian Style. The Government of Canada's language portal has moved domain twice, the article on SI units returns 404, the new search tool loads through JavaScript, and the site sits behind Cloudflare. Our recommendation of mL rests on Schedule I of the Act, which permits three symbols, plus the consistent practice of the Food and Drug Regulations and the CFIA — not on the style manual.

homo milk, green onion vs scallion, pop vs soda, Kraft Dinner, back bacon. No primary source. The Food and Drug Regulations contain none of them — we searched all four, zero hits — and the dairy and meat standards of identity were repealed from the FDR in 2024 and moved to CFIA documents whose current URLs return 410 Gone. Use them as colloquialisms if you like; we are not presenting them as documented Canadian usage.

Whether meat and produce are habitually advertised by the pound in Canadian shops. The packaged-goods rule is clear — metric first, imperial optional alongside — but in-store price display is governed by rules we did not read to the article level.

And a note on our own method. Health Canada's Table of Reference Amounts blocks automated readers. We read it twice, separately, and the values matched both times, but we could not cross-check the raw HTML. Similarly, the anglo-Canadian recipe rounding patterns (2 tbsp (25 mL)) come from indexed text of Canadian Living recipe pages, not from pages we opened: canadianliving.com returns 403 and the recipe URLs we tried give 404. The pattern is solid; do not quote any of those as a literal line from a specific recipe.