Focaccia Lab261 recipes
← Focaccia Lab

Focaccia around the world

257 focaccia recipes in 6 languages: English 113, Italian 46, French 37, German 32, Dutch 18 and Portuguese 11. Each is reduced to grams per 100 g of flour, the same as everywhere in the lab, so a French page and an American one line up. English, the largest group, is the one the others are compared with.

The language is the page's, not the cook's country: a French page may be from Quebec, a Portuguese one from Brazil, a Dutch one from Belgium. Each language's lines are read in its own words and units, and a recipe that gives “a pinch” of salt counts a pinch.

Also in the lab, too few to compare (under 8 recipes): Spanish 4.

Where they part from English

The clearest differences for each language, medians per 100 g of flour. Only differences large enough to matter and unlikely to be chance are listed (how below).

  • French 37 recipesFrench recipes use 18% less water than English ones (64% against 79% of the flour weight).
  • Italian 46 recipesItalian recipes use 18% less water than English ones (65% against 79% of the flour weight), 40% less olive oil (7.9% against 13%) and 42% less yeast (0.8% against 1.4%).
  • German 32 recipesGerman recipes use 10% less water than English ones (71% against 79% of the flour weight) and 46% less yeast (0.8% against 1.4%); most use no sugar (68%, against 46% of English recipes).
  • Dutch 18 recipesDutch recipes use 31% less olive oil than English ones (9.1% against 13% of the flour weight).

Portuguese (11) shows no clear difference from English on any ingredient.

Every ingredient, language by language

Grams per 100 g of flour. One row a language, largest first.

middle half, and the median (the number at right; when most use none, the share that uses any)middle half of every recipesmall number after a name: recipes

Water
Olive oil
Salt
Yeast
Sugar

The typical pan in each language

The median of each language's recipes for every ingredient, scaled to 500 g of flour. No single recipe is exactly this. Under each, the recipe nearest its language's medians.

The medians and middle halves as a table
Median and middle half per 100 g of flour, by language
LanguageWaterOlive oilSaltYeastSugar
English 11379%68% to 87%13%8% to 18%1.9%1.6% to 2.3%1.4%1% to 1.9%0.9%0% to 2.2%
Italian 4665%60% to 77%7.9%5.4% to 13%2%1.9% to 3%0.8%0.5% to 1.2%0.8%0% to 1.4%
French 3764%60% to 70%9%6% to 16%2%1.3% to 2.3%1.3%0.8% to 1.6%0%0% to 1.4%
German 3271%62% to 76%8.1%5% to 11%2%1.7% to 2.3%0.8%0.4% to 1.4%0%0% to 0.1%
Dutch 1867%62% to 76%9.1%5.4% to 9.1%2%1.2% to 2%1.4%0.5% to 2.3%0.8%0% to 3.9%
Portuguese 1163%58% to 74%11%7.1% to 19%1.6%1.4% to 2%1.7%0.9% to 2%2.5%1.4% to 4.1%

How the comparison works

A language gets a row with at least 8 recipes. Each is compared with the English recipes on every ingredient, and a difference is listed only when it clears two bars: the medians sit at least a third of the middle half of all recipes apart (about half a standard deviation, a medium effect), and a rank test puts the gap at 3 standard errors or more, so a language with few recipes needs a large difference. For an ingredient many recipes skip, the share using none counts too: at least 25 points apart, at the same 3 standard errors.

Every ingredient is tested for every language, a few dozen tests per lab, which is why the bar is higher than the usual two standard errors. Salt is listed last when it differs: many recipes give it as a pinch or leave it to taste. Shares and “more than” percentages are rounded down, so none is an overstatement.

These are what recipe writers in each language do, not rules of each country's cooking. A language with 8 to 20 recipes may come mostly from a few sites; each recipe page names its source.