Carrot Cake Lab260 recipes

Carrot Cake Lab

Two overlapping styles in 260 carrot cake recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 260 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 260.

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 carrot cake.

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 fat to the right; 30% of the variation.
Up ↑
More egg, leavening and carrot upward; 23% of the variation.

Along the first direction sugar, salt, fat and spice 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

136 recipes · 52% of all 260 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 45 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 83% vs 107% for all

    average rank: 29th percentile of all recipes

  • Saltmedian 0.1% vs 0.6% for all

    average rank: 33rd percentile of all recipes · none in 47% (all recipes 29%)

  • Spicemedian 0.9% vs 1.9% for all

    average rank: 36th percentile of all recipes · none in 38% (all recipes 21%)

Its median recipe, at 250 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Carrot250 g265 g
Sugar210 g265 g
Fat175 g195 g
Egg165 g170 g
Spice2.5 g5 g
Leavening13 g12 g
Salt0.5 g1.5 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 sugar and salt

124 recipes · 48% of all 260 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 38 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 146% vs 107% for all

    average rank: 73rd percentile of all recipes

  • Saltmedian 1.5% vs 0.6% for all

    average rank: 69th percentile of all recipes · none in 9% (all recipes 29%)

  • Spicemedian 2.4% vs 1.9% for all

    average rank: 66th percentile of all recipes · none in 2% (all recipes 21%)

Its median recipe, at 250 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Carrot295 g265 g
Sugar365 g265 g
Fat220 g195 g
Egg180 g170 g
Spice6 g5 g
Leavening12 g12 g
Salt3.5 g1.5 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 26 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 0.17 · 4 groups 0.16. 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 260, 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.