Sugar Cookies Lab513 recipes

Sugar Cookies Lab

Two overlapping styles in 513 sugar cookie recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 513 recipes by their 5 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 513.

The data splits best into two groups, but they overlap: a silhouette of 0.21, 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 sugar 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 sugar, salt and leavening to the right; 35% of the variation.
Up ↑
More fat, less egg upward; 23% of the variation.

Along the first direction sugar, salt and leavening 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 sugar and salt

266 recipes · 52% of all 513 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 11 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 53% vs 64% for all

    average rank: 31st percentile of all recipes

  • Saltmedian 0.4% vs 0.7% for all

    average rank: 34th percentile of all recipes · none in 30% (all recipes 19%)

  • Leaveningmedian 0.7% vs 1.3% for all

    average rank: 35th percentile of all recipes · none in 37% (all recipes 22%)

Its median recipe, at 280 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Fat160 g170 g
Sugar150 g180 g
Egg45 g50 g
Leavening2 g3.5 g
Salt1 g2 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 280 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

BMore sugar and salt

247 recipes · 48% of all 513 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 11 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 80% vs 64% for all

    average rank: 70th percentile of all recipes

  • Saltmedian 1% vs 0.7% for all

    average rank: 67th percentile of all recipes

  • Leaveningmedian 2% vs 1.3% for all

    average rank: 66th percentile of all recipes · none in 6% (all recipes 22%)

Its median recipe, at 280 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Fat175 g170 g
Sugar225 g180 g
Egg55 g50 g
Leavening6 g3.5 g
Salt3 g2 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 280 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 52 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 0.21 · 3 groups 0.18 · 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 513, 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.