Naan Lab107 recipes

Naan Lab

Two overlapping styles in 107 naan recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 107 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 107.

The data splits best into two groups, but they overlap: a silhouette of 0.22, 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 naan.

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 yeast and liquid, less baking powder or soda to the right; 30% of the variation.
Up ↑
More fat, less salt upward; 19% of the variation.

The two groups

AClose to the overall median

84 recipes · 79% of all 107

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Baking powder or sodamedian 0% vs 0% for all

    average rank: 40th percentile of all recipes · none in 77% (all recipes 60%)

  • Yeastmedian 1.2% vs 1% for all

    average rank: 59th percentile of all recipes · none in 7% (all recipes 25%)

Its median recipe, at 300 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Liquid210 g205 g
Fat25 g26 g
Sugar4 g4 g
Yeast3.5 g3 g
Baking powder or sodanonenone
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

BWith baking powder or soda, little or no yeast

23 recipes · 21% of all 107

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Baking powder or sodamedian 2% vs 0% for all

    average rank: 88th percentile of all recipes · none in 0% (all recipes 60%)

  • Yeastmedian 0% vs 1% for all

    average rank: 16th percentile of all recipes · none in 91% (all recipes 25%)

  • Liquidmedian 65% vs 68% for all

    average rank: 40th 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
Liquid195 g205 g
Fat33 g26 g
Sugar3.5 g4 g
Yeastnone3 g
Baking powder or soda6 gnone
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 11 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 0.22 · 3 groups 0.21 · 4 groups 0.18. 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 107, 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.