Banana Bread Lab708 recipes

Banana Bread Lab

Two overlapping styles in 708 banana bread recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 708 recipes by their 7 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 708.

The data splits best into two groups, but they overlap: a silhouette of 0.19, 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 banana bread.

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, fat and egg to the right; 30% of the variation.
Up ↑
More leavening and banana, less salt upward; 18% of the variation.

Along the first direction sugar, fat, egg, banana 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

ALess fat and sugar

444 recipes · 63% of all 708 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 55 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Fatmedian 37% vs 45% for all

    average rank: 36th percentile of all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 61% vs 78% for all

    average rank: 37th percentile of all recipes

  • Bananamedian 136% vs 148% for all

    average rank: 39th 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
Banana340 g370 g
Sugar150 g195 g
Fat95 g115 g
Egg100 g100 g
Dairy60 g37 g
Leavening8 g9 g
Salt1.5 g2.5 g

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

Closest to the middle of the group

BMore fat and sugar

264 recipes · 37% of all 708 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 58 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Fatmedian 58% vs 45% for all

    average rank: 73rd percentile of all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 97% vs 78% for all

    average rank: 72nd percentile of all recipes

  • Bananamedian 189% vs 148% for all

    average rank: 68th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 250 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Banana470 g370 g
Sugar245 g195 g
Fat145 g115 g
Egg130 g100 g
Dairynone37 g
Leavening10 g9 g
Salt3.5 g2.5 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 71 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 0.19 · 3 groups 0.16 · 4 groups 0.15. 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 708, 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.