Oatmeal Cookies Lab499 recipes
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Oatmeal cookies around the world

495 oatmeal cookie recipes in 6 languages: English 411, French 28, German 19, Portuguese 16, Spanish 11 and Dutch 10. 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): Italian 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).

  • Dutch 10 recipesDutch recipes use about half as much fat as English ones (39% against 91% of the flour weight), 30% less sugar (100% against 144%) and under a third as much salt (0.4% against 1.6%).
  • Spanish 11 recipesSpanish recipes use 26% less sugar than English ones (105% against 144% of the flour weight) and about half as much leavening (1.3% against 3%).
  • French 28 recipesFrench recipes use 31% less sugar than English ones (98% against 144% of the flour weight) and 34% less egg (26% against 40%); most use no salt (57%, against 6% of English recipes).
  • Portuguese 16 recipes43% of Portuguese recipes use no leavening, against 1% of English recipes; most use no salt (87%, against 6%).
  • German 19 recipesGerman recipes use 21% less sugar than English ones (113% against 144% of the flour weight) and under a third as much salt (0.4% against 1.6%).

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

Oats
Fat
Sugar
Egg
Leavening
Salt

The typical batch in each language

The median of each language's recipes for every ingredient, scaled to 190 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
LanguageOatsFatSugarEggLeaveningSalt
English 41190%64% to 124%91%81% to 116%144%120% to 171%40%32% to 53%3%2.4% to 3.5%1.6%1.2% to 2.1%
French 2883%51% to 104%86%63% to 110%98%61% to 143%26%0% to 40%3.1%1.8% to 4.4%0%0% to 0.5%
German 19100%74% to 120%100%75% to 123%113%85% to 123%39%14% to 50%2.5%1.8% to 4.2%0.4%0.2% to 1.1%
Portuguese 1670%62% to 128%78%63% to 96%117%82% to 146%30%20% to 40%1.8%0% to 3.7%0%0% to 0%
Spanish 1167%48% to 118%86%67% to 95%105%82% to 124%36%17% to 46%1.3%0% to 2.5%0.3%0.2% to 1.5%
Dutch 1065%65% to 110%39%30% to 49%100%70% to 105%50%11% to 50%4.6%2.4% to 4.6%0.4%0.05% to 0.4%

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.