English Muffins Lab76 recipes

English Muffins Lab

Two overlapping styles in 76 English muffin recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 76 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 76.

The data splits best into two groups, but they overlap: a silhouette of 0.21, 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 English muffin.

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 liquid, yeast and salt to the right; 32% of the variation.
Up ↑
More sugar and fat upward; 25% of the variation.

Along the first direction liquid, yeast and salt 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

ALess liquid and yeast

47 recipes · 62% of all 76

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Liquidmedian 68% vs 74% for all

    average rank: 33rd percentile of all recipes

  • Yeastmedian 1% vs 1.2% for all

    average rank: 36th percentile of all recipes · none in 25% (all recipes 17%)

Its median recipe, at 450 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Liquid305 g335 g
Fat27 g27 g
Sugar18 g18 g
Salt7 g7 g
Yeast4.5 g5 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 450 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

BMore liquid and yeast

29 recipes · 38% of all 76

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Liquidmedian 89% vs 74% for all

    average rank: 78th percentile of all recipes

  • Yeastmedian 1.9% vs 1.2% for all

    average rank: 72nd percentile of all recipes

  • Saltmedian 1.8% vs 1.6% for all

    average rank: 61st percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 450 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Liquid400 g335 g
Fat31 g27 g
Sugar16 g18 g
Salt8 g7 g
Yeast9 g5 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 450 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 3. 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 8 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 0.21 · 3 groups 0.20. 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 76, 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.