Scones Lab660 recipes

Scones Lab

Two overlapping styles in 660 scone recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 660 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 660.

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 scone.

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 butter, sugar and salt to the right; 32% of the variation.
Up ↑
More liquid, less egg upward; 21% of the variation.

Along the first direction butter, sugar 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

AMore butter and sugar

357 recipes · 54% of all 660 · median oven 400°F (205°C), 18 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Buttermedian 40% vs 33% for all

    average rank: 69th percentile of all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 27% vs 20% for all

    average rank: 68th percentile of all recipes

  • Saltmedian 1.1% vs 0.8% for all

    average rank: 65th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 250 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Butter100 g85 g
Liquid120 g130 g
Sugar65 g50 g
Egg49 g39 g
Leavening11 g11 g
Salt3 g2 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 250 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

BLess butter and sugar

303 recipes · 46% of all 660 · median oven 400°F (205°C), 15 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Buttermedian 24% vs 33% for all

    average rank: 27th percentile of all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 12% vs 20% for all

    average rank: 28th percentile of all recipes

  • Saltmedian 0.2% vs 0.8% for all

    average rank: 32nd percentile of all recipes · none in 27% (all recipes 13%)

Its median recipe, at 250 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Butter60 g85 g
Liquid140 g130 g
Sugar30 g50 g
Egg18 g39 g
Leavening11 g11 g
Salt0.5 g2 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 250 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 66 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 0.19. 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 660, 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.