Chocolate Cake Lab357 recipes

Chocolate Cake Lab

Two overlapping styles in 357 chocolate cake recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 357 recipes by their 8 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 357.

The data splits best into two groups, but they overlap: a silhouette of 0.21, 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 chocolate 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 cocoa, liquid and salt to the right; 30% of the variation.
Up ↑
More egg, fat and sugar upward; 20% of the variation.

Along the first direction cocoa, liquid, salt, sugar and leavening 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 cocoa and sugar

225 recipes · 63% of all 357 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 35 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Cocoamedian 14% vs 23% for all

    average rank: 36th percentile of all recipes · none in 22% (all recipes 14%)

  • Sugarmedian 110% vs 142% for all

    average rank: 37th percentile of all recipes

  • Saltmedian 0.2% vs 1.1% for all

    average rank: 35th percentile of all recipes · none in 45% (all recipes 30%)

Its median recipe, at 250 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Cocoa36 g55 g
Chocolatenonenone
Sugar275 g355 g
Fat155 g155 g
Egg115 g115 g
Liquid315 g345 g
Leavening11 g12 g
Salt0.5 g3 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 cocoa and sugar

132 recipes · 37% of all 357 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 33 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Cocoamedian 30% vs 23% for all

    average rank: 75th percentile of all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 168% vs 142% for all

    average rank: 72nd percentile of all recipes

  • Saltmedian 2.2% vs 1.1% for all

    average rank: 75th percentile of all recipes · none in 5% (all recipes 30%)

Its median recipe, at 250 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Cocoa75 g55 g
Chocolatenonenone
Sugar420 g355 g
Fat165 g155 g
Egg115 g115 g
Liquid470 g345 g
Leavening16 g12 g
Salt6 g3 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 36 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 0.21 · 3 groups 0.20 · 4 groups 0.20. 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 357, 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.