Cinnamon Rolls Lab364 recipes

Cinnamon Rolls Lab

Two styles in 364 cinnamon roll recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 364 recipes by their 6 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 364.

The data splits best into two groups, and they separate: a silhouette of 0.26, on a scale where 0 is no separation and 1 is complete. They still touch at the edges, so a recipe near a boundary could sit in either.

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 sugar, butter and egg to the right; 27% of the variation.
Up ↑
More egg and salt, less liquid upward; 22% of the variation.

The two groups

AClose to the overall median

269 recipes · 74% of all 364 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 25 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 13% vs 14% for all

    average rank: 39th percentile of all recipes

  • Buttermedian 14% vs 16% for all

    average rank: 40th 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
Liquid265 g265 g
Butter70 g80 g
Sugar65 g70 g
Egg55 g55 g
Yeast8 g8 g
Salt6 g5 g

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

Closest to the middle of the group

BMore sugar and butter

95 recipes · 26% of all 364 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 25 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 28% vs 14% for all

    average rank: 81st percentile of all recipes

  • Buttermedian 29% vs 16% for all

    average rank: 78th percentile of all recipes

  • Saltmedian 0.5% vs 1% for all

    average rank: 36th 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
Liquid260 g265 g
Butter145 g80 g
Sugar140 g70 g
Egg60 g55 g
Yeast7 g8 g
Salt2.5 g5 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 37 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 0.26 · 3 groups 0.17 · 4 groups 0.15. 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 364, 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.