Challah Lab72 recipes

Challah Lab

No clear styles in 72 challah recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 72 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 72.

The best split found, into two groups, has a silhouette of 0.17, on a scale where 0 is no separation and 1 is complete. That is too low to call them styles: these recipes form one continuous spread. The groups below are its two ends, shown for reference.

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 oil, less water to the right; 27% of the variation.
Up ↑
More sweetener and salt, less yeast upward; 22% of the variation.

The two ends of the spread

ALess egg, more water

41 recipes · 57% of all 72 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 28 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Eggmedian 20% vs 25% for all

    average rank: 35th percentile of all recipes

  • Watermedian 46% vs 40% for all

    average rank: 65th percentile of all recipes

  • Yeastmedian 1.3% vs 1.4% for all

    average rank: 39th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 500 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Egg100 g125 g
Oil50 g60 g
Sweetener65 g65 g
Water230 g200 g
Salt9 g9 g
Yeast7 g7 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 500 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

BMore egg, less water

31 recipes · 43% of all 72 · median oven 365°F (185°C), 30 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Eggmedian 30% vs 25% for all

    average rank: 70th percentile of all recipes

  • Watermedian 34% vs 40% for all

    average rank: 30th percentile of all recipes

  • Yeastmedian 1.7% vs 1.4% for all

    average rank: 65th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 500 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Egg150 g125 g
Oil70 g60 g
Sweetener65 g65 g
Water170 g200 g
Salt11 g9 g
Yeast9 g7 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 500 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 3. 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 8 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 0.17 · 3 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 72, 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.