Sugar cookies over time
447 of the 513 recipes carry a publication date, from 2003 to 2026. Below: how many pages each year, whether the typical batch changed between the oldest and newest, and the oldest and newest pages themselves.
A date here is the one the page gives for itself: when it was published, or last updated. Sites often refresh an old recipe and its date together, so read these as when the pages went up, not when the recipes were created.
Recipes per year
Dated pages by the year they give. The first bar gathers the 1 pages from before 2007. Shading marks the periods compared below.
How the typical batch changed
Between sugar cookie pages dated before 2018 and those dated 2024 or later, the median salt rose from 0.5% to 0.6% of the flour weight. Fat, sugar, egg and leavening show no clear change.
| Per 100 g flour | Before 2018115 recipes | 2018 to 202097 recipes | 2021 to 2023123 recipes | 2024 and later112 recipes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FatNo clear change | 60% | 61% | 61% | 60% |
| SugarNo clear change | 64% | 64% | 64% | 65% |
| EggNo clear change | 20% | 17% | 18% | 18% |
| LeaveningNo clear change | 1% | 1.2% | 1.3% | 1.5% |
| SaltHigher | 0.5% | 0.8% | 0.8% | 0.6% |
Each cell is the median baker's percentage in that period: grams of the ingredient per 100 g of flour. Higher and lower compare the newest period with the oldest, only where the change is clear (see how below). Periods are cut at year boundaries so each holds about the same number of recipes.
Oldest and newest pages
Oldest dates
Dec 7, 2003
Sablés amandine (sablés de Noël) : la meilleure recette · marmiton.orgFeb 12, 2007
Halloween Ausstecherle · gutekueche.atOct 24, 2007
Sugar Cookie Dough · countryliving.comNov 27, 2007
Ptit sablés de noel tout simple !!! · ptitchef.comDec 20, 2007
Des petits biscuits sables de noel.... · ptitchef.com
Newest dates
Sep 24, 2026
Soft and Chewy Sugar Cookies · handletheheat.comSep 19, 2026
Bredele alsaciens: sablés de Noël (8 variantes) · mapatisserie.frAug 24, 2026
Lemon Sugar Cookie Recipe · iambaker.netJun 29, 2026
Soft Drop Sugar Cookies · crazyforcrust.comJun 29, 2026
Chewy Sugar Cookies Recipe · crazyforcrust.com
How the dates are read
Each date is the publication date in the recipe page's own structured data. 38 of the 513 recipes have none, or one without a year (such as “December 3”), and are left out.
28 more carry a date their site gave to many pages at once, which marks a site move or redesign rather than a publication: 2018-01-01 on tasteofhome.com (222 pages across Recipe Lab, 12 of them here), 2004-01-01 on bettycrocker.com (21 pages across Recipe Lab, 3 of them here) and 2016-11-16 on foodnetwork.com (19 pages across Recipe Lab, 2 of them here), and 9 more like it. They are left out too.
A change counts as clear when the newest period's median differs from the oldest period's by at least a tenth and a rank test puts the gap at 2.5 standard errors or more. For the share of recipes using an ingredient, the bar is 3 standard errors and 8 percentage points. Every ingredient is tested, so a lower bar would flag chance differences on most pages.
2026 is still in progress, so its bar is short for a reason that has nothing to do with baking.