Oatmeal Cookies Lab499 recipes

Oatmeal Cookies Lab

Two overlapping styles in 499 oatmeal cookie recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 499 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 499.

The data splits best into two groups, but they overlap: a silhouette of 0.24, 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 oatmeal cookie.

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 fat, sugar and oats to the right; 41% of the variation.
Up ↑
More leavening upward; 17% of the variation.

Along the first direction fat, sugar, oats, egg 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 fat, fewer oats

269 recipes · 54% of all 499 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 12 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Fatmedian 80% vs 91% for all

    average rank: 32nd percentile of all recipes

  • Oatsmedian 64% vs 85% for all

    average rank: 33rd percentile of all recipes

  • Eggmedian 33% vs 40% for all

    average rank: 34th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 190 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Oats120 g160 g
Fat150 g175 g
Sugar225 g255 g
Egg60 g75 g
Leavening4.5 g6 g
Salt2 g2.5 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 190 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

BMore fat and oats

230 recipes · 46% of all 499 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 11 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Fatmedian 115% vs 91% for all

    average rank: 71st percentile of all recipes

  • Oatsmedian 121% vs 85% for all

    average rank: 69th percentile of all recipes

  • Eggmedian 50% vs 40% for all

    average rank: 69th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 190 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Oats230 g160 g
Fat220 g175 g
Sugar320 g255 g
Egg95 g75 g
Leavening6 g6 g
Salt3.5 g2.5 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 190 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 50 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 0.24 · 3 groups 0.17 · 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 499, 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.