Croissants Lab114 recipes

Croissants Lab

Two overlapping styles in 114 croissant recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 114 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 114.

The data splits best into two groups, but they overlap: a silhouette of 0.19, 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 croissant.

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 milk or water, less egg in the dough and sugar to the right; 23% of the variation.
Up ↑
More butter and salt upward; 22% of the variation.

The two groups

ALess egg in the dough

78 recipes · 68% of all 114 · median oven 375°F (190°C), 20 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Egg in the doughmedian 0% vs 1.6% for all

    average rank: 36th percentile of all recipes · none in 71% (all recipes 50%)

  • Milk or watermedian 59% vs 58% for all

    average rank: 58th 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
Butter300 g300 g
Milk or water295 g290 g
Sugar50 g50 g
Salt10 g10 g
Yeast8 g8 g
Egg in the doughnone8 g

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

Closest to the middle of the group

BWith egg in the dough, less milk or water

36 recipes · 32% of all 114 · median oven 375°F (190°C), 19 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Egg in the doughmedian 15% vs 1.6% for all

    average rank: 80th percentile of all recipes · none in 2% (all recipes 50%)

  • Milk or watermedian 50% vs 58% for all

    average rank: 32nd percentile of all recipes

  • Saltmedian 1.6% vs 2% for all

    average rank: 38th 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
Butter300 g300 g
Milk or water250 g290 g
Sugar50 g50 g
Salt8 g10 g
Yeast9 g8 g
Egg in the dough75 g8 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 12 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 0.19 · 3 groups 0.15 · 4 groups 0.16. 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 114, 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.