Biscuits Lab321 recipes

Biscuits Lab

No clear styles in 321 biscuit recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 321 recipes by their 5 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 321.

The best split found, into two groups, has a silhouette of 0.17, on a scale where 0 is no separation and 1 is complete. That is too low to call them styles: these recipes form one continuous spread. The groups below are its two ends, shown for reference.

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 buttermilk and leavening, less fat to the right; 29% of the variation.
Up ↑
More salt and fat upward; 22% of the variation.

The two ends of the spread

AMore buttermilk, less fat

167 recipes · 52% of all 321 · median oven 425°F (220°C), 14 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Buttermilkmedian 98% vs 84% for all

    average rank: 65th percentile of all recipes

  • Fatmedian 34% vs 40% for all

    average rank: 36th percentile of all recipes

  • Leaveningmedian 5.7% vs 5.1% for all

    average rank: 65th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 300 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Fat100 g120 g
Buttermilk295 g255 g
Leavening17 g15 g
Sugar5 g10 g
Salt5 g5 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 300 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

BLess buttermilk, more fat

154 recipes · 48% of all 321 · median oven 425°F (220°C), 15 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Buttermilkmedian 73% vs 84% for all

    average rank: 33rd percentile of all recipes

  • Fatmedian 45% vs 40% for all

    average rank: 65th percentile of all recipes

  • Leaveningmedian 4.5% vs 5.1% for all

    average rank: 34th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 300 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Fat135 g120 g
Buttermilk220 g255 g
Leavening13 g15 g
Sugar15 g10 g
Salt4.5 g5 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 300 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 33 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 0.17 · 3 groups 0.17 · 4 groups 0.17. 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 321, 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.