What 5,750 online recipes have in common
Salt is in 71% of the 5,750 recipes we analyzed, and garlic is in 40%. The median recipe lists 12 ingredients and takes 50 minutes. When a recipe uses the oven, the most common setting is 350°F.
- of recipes use salt
- 71%
- ingredients in the median recipe
- 12
- minutes, median total time
- 50
- most common oven setting
- 350°F
Key findings
Salt appears in 71% of online recipes, more than any other ingredient.
Garlic is the second most common ingredient in online recipes, in 40% of them. Onion is in 35%.
Recipes that measure garlic in cloves call for a median of 3 cloves, and 43% call for 4 or more.
The median online recipe lists 12 ingredients, and 68% list 10 or more.
The median online recipe takes 50 minutes from start to finish, by the time its author states.
30% of online recipes are ready in 30 minutes or less, and 18% take more than 2 hours.
Japanese recipes are the quickest of the 9 largest cuisines, with a median of 30 minutes. French and Greek recipes take the longest, at 80 minutes.
Korean recipes are 48 times as likely as the average recipe to use gochugaru (Korean chili flakes): 26% of Korean recipes against 0.5% overall. No cuisine has a stronger signature ingredient.
Fish sauce is in 63% of Vietnamese recipes and 62% of Thai recipes, against 3% of all recipes.
32% of online recipes use the oven. Of those that give a temperature, 38% use 350°F (180°C), the most common setting.
52% of dessert recipes call for salt.
24% of savory recipes add sugar, honey, maple syrup or another sweetener.
The 20 most common ingredients
Share of 5,750 recipes that use each one. Water is left out.
Median total time by cuisine
Cuisines with at least 100 recipes that state a time. Quickest first.
The small number is how many recipes in that cuisine state a time.
Signature ingredient by cuisine
The ingredient each cuisine uses most often compared with all recipes. Cuisines with at least 100 recipes.
| Cuisine | Ingredient | In this cuisine | In all recipes | Times as likely |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Korean | Gochugaru | 26% | 0.5% | 48× |
| Japanese | Sake | 23% | 0.7% | 34× |
| Chinese | Shaoxing wine | 29% | 1.2% | 25× |
| Mexican | Tortillas | 31% | 1.3% | 24× |
| Vietnamese | Fish sauce | 63% | 3.1% | 20× |
| Thai | Fish sauce | 62% | 3.1% | 20× |
| Italian | Parmesan | 34% | 2.5% | 13× |
| Indian | Garam masala | 33% | 2.7% | 12× |
| Greek | Dill | 17% | 2.5% | 6.7× |
| French | Thyme | 29% | 4.8% | 6.1× |
| American | Vanilla extract | 25% | 7.3% | 3.5× |
| Spanish | Olive oil | 66% | 22.5% | 2.9× |
| Middle Eastern | Paprika | 18% | 6.5% | 2.8× |
Oven temperatures
The five most common settings, as a share of the 1,276 oven recipes that give a temperature.
Method
The sample is the Saucepan recipe catalog: 5,750 recipes published on 2,188 websites. 95% of them (5,482) came from Google search results for 1,240 dishes across 67 cuisines, diets and occasions, collected in October 2026. For each dish we kept several results, each from a different site, and capped how many recipes one site could supply. The rest came from earlier hand-picked lists of well-known dishes. No single site makes up more than 0.8% of the sample. Only aggregate numbers are published here: no recipe text.
Ingredient lists are taken as each site publishes them. Each ingredient line is reduced to a plain name: amounts, sizes, preparation words and plurals are removed, so "2 large eggs, beaten" becomes "egg". The name is then matched to an ingredient in Saucepan's ingredient list, so "kosher salt", "sea salt" and "salt" count as salt, and "pepper" counts as black pepper. 78% of 74,028 ingredient lines matched. The rest are counted under their own names. A recipe counts once per ingredient, however many times it lists it. Water is left out of the rankings.
Times are the total time the source states. When only prep and cook times are given, we add them. 1,111 recipes state no time and 52 state more than 24 hours (curing, fermenting or data errors). Both are left out, which leaves 4,587 timed recipes. We report medians because a few long recipes would pull an average up.
Cuisine and course labels (dessert, main, side) were assigned by a language model from the dish name and ingredients. Cuisines are compared only when they have at least 100 recipes, and times by cuisine only when at least 100 of those recipes state a time. Labels that name a whole continent, such as "African", are left out. A signature ingredient is the one with the highest ratio of its share in that cuisine to its share in all recipes, among ingredients in at least 15% of the cuisine's recipes.
A recipe uses the oven when a step mentions the oven or preheating (a Dutch oven doesn't count). The temperature is the first one given in an oven step, with Celsius converted and rounded to the nearest 25°F. 1,276 of 1,852 oven recipes give one. Garlic cloves are counted in the 1,816 recipes that measure garlic in cloves.
Limitations
- These are recipes published online, mostly in English, and they lean toward pages that rank well in search. They describe what recipe sites publish, not what people cook at home.
- The dish list was chosen to cover many cuisines, diets and holidays, so each cuisine's share of the sample reflects that choice, not its share of the web.
- Matching ingredient names is approximate. A name we could not match is still counted, under its own name.
The numbers are computed by a script anyone can check against this method. Download them as JSON or read this page as Markdown.
Cite this
Saucepan, "What 5,750 online recipes have in common," 2026. https://getsaucepan.com/research/recipe-statistics
Free to use under CC BY 4.0. Please link to this page.