Brioche Lab217 recipes

Brioche Lab

Two styles in 217 brioche recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 217 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 217.

The data splits best into two groups, and they separate: a silhouette of 0.27, on a scale where 0 is no separation and 1 is complete. They still touch at the edges, so a recipe near a boundary could sit in either.

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 egg and butter, less milk or water to the right; 43% of the variation.
Up ↑
More yeast, less salt upward; 18% of the variation.

The two groups

AMore butter and egg

119 recipes · 55% of all 217 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 30 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Buttermedian 47% vs 36% for all

    average rank: 70th percentile of all recipes

  • Eggmedian 55% vs 40% for all

    average rank: 70th percentile of all recipes

  • Milk or watermedian 17% vs 25% for all

    average rank: 33rd percentile of all recipes · none in 21% (all recipes 12%)

Its median recipe, at 400 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Butter190 g145 g
Egg220 g160 g
Sugar48 g55 g
Milk or water65 g100 g
Salt7 g6 g
Yeast6 g6 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 400 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

BLess butter and egg

98 recipes · 45% of all 217 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 30 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Buttermedian 24% vs 36% for all

    average rank: 26th percentile of all recipes

  • Eggmedian 25% vs 40% for all

    average rank: 26th percentile of all recipes

  • Milk or watermedian 40% vs 25% for all

    average rank: 71st percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 400 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Butter95 g145 g
Egg100 g160 g
Sugar65 g55 g
Milk or water160 g100 g
Salt2.5 g6 g
Yeast5 g6 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 400 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 22 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 0.27 · 3 groups 0.24 · 4 groups 0.21. 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 217, 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.