Bagels Lab150 recipes

Bagels Lab

Two overlapping styles in 150 bagel recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 150 recipes by their 4 ingredient ratios alone, so that recipes built alike land together. Each group is named only by the numbers: the ingredients where its recipes sit furthest from the middle of all 150.

The data splits best into two groups, but they overlap: a silhouette of 0.22, on a scale where 0 is no separation and 1 is complete. Read them as tendencies within one broad spread rather than separate kinds of bagel.

The recipes on one map

Every recipe, placed on the two directions along which the ratios vary most (a principal component projection). Close dots are recipes built alike. The lettered rings mark the middle of each group.

AB
Across →
More water, salt and yeast to the right; 33% of the variation.
Up ↑
More malt or sugar and yeast upward; 27% of the variation.

Along the first direction water, salt and yeast all rise together, each measured against the flour. A recipe sits far along it by using more of them or by using less flour, which the ratios cannot tell apart. The groups sit apart mostly along this direction.

The two groups

AMore water

92 recipes · 61% of all 150 · median oven 425°F (220°C), 20 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Watermedian 62% vs 59% for all

    average rank: 68th percentile of all recipes

  • Yeastmedian 1.3% vs 1.1% for all

    average rank: 59th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 500 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Water310 g295 g
Malt or sugar20 g20 g
Salt10 g10 g
Yeast7 g6 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 500 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

BLess water and yeast

58 recipes · 39% of all 150 · median oven 425°F (220°C), 22 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Watermedian 50% vs 59% for all

    average rank: 22nd percentile of all recipes

  • Yeastmedian 0.4% vs 1.1% for all

    average rank: 36th percentile of all recipes · none in 39% (all recipes 18%)

  • Saltmedian 1.7% vs 1.9% for all

    average rank: 42nd percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 500 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Water250 g295 g
Malt or sugar23 g20 g
Salt8 g10 g
Yeast2 g6 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 500 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

How the groups are found

Each ratio is converted to a z-score (how many standard deviations a recipe sits from the mean), capped at 3 so one extreme recipe cannot claim a group, and k-means sorts the recipes into k groups, trying k from 2 to 4. Each k runs from 16 fixed starting points and keeps the tightest result, so the page is the same on every build. No group may hold fewer than 15 recipes.

The number of groups is the one with the best silhouette, which compares how close each recipe is to its own group with how close it is to the next one. By number of groups: 2 groups 0.22 · 3 groups 0.22 · 4 groups 0.23. At 0.25 or more the page calls the groups separate; from 0.18 to 0.25, overlapping; under 0.18, no clear styles.

A group's name lists the one to three ingredients where its recipes rank furthest from the middle of all 150, on average. “More” and “less” are relative to the whole dataset, and the names say nothing about texture or taste, which the ratios alone do not show. The median recipe of a group is, like the typical recipe on the overview, the middle of each ingredient separately, not one real recipe. The recipes listed under each group are the ones nearest its center, at most two from any one site.