Deviled Eggs Lab
What moves together in 379 deviled egg recipes
When a recipe uses more of one ingredient, does it tend to use more or less of another? For every pair of the 7 ingredient ratios (grams per egg), this page ranks all 379 recipes on each and measures how closely the two rankings agree: Spearman's rho, from −1 (the more of one, always the less of the other) through 0 (unrelated) to 1 (always rise together).
21 pairs in all: 1 rises together at rho 0.20 or more, 3 move in opposite directions at −0.20 or less, and 9 are close to unrelated (between −0.10 and 0.10). This describes recipes as they are published; it does not say what changing one amount would do to a recipe.
Every pair at once
Read a cell by its row and column. Caramel cells rise together, slate cells move in opposite directions, and the deeper the color the stronger the relationship. Pale cells with grey numbers are not distinguishable from no relationship with 379 recipes (p of 0.05 or more).
All 21 pairs as a table
| Pair | Rho | Strength | p |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mayonnaise or oil and dairy or avocado | −0.53 | moderate | under 0.001 |
| Mustard and meat or fish | −0.24 | weak | under 0.001 |
| Meat or fish and salt | −0.23 | weak | under 0.001 |
| Vinegar or juice and salt | 0.22 | weak | under 0.001 |
| Mustard and salt | 0.19 | very weak | under 0.001 |
| Dairy or avocado and pickles and relish | −0.19 | very weak | under 0.001 |
| Vinegar or juice and pickles and relish | −0.15 | very weak | 0.003 |
| Vinegar or juice and meat or fish | −0.14 | very weak | 0.009 |
| Mustard and pickles and relish | 0.13 | very weak | 0.015 |
| Dairy or avocado and mustard | −0.11 | very weak | 0.027 |
| Mayonnaise or oil and mustard | 0.11 | very weak | 0.035 |
| Pickles and relish and meat or fish | 0.10 | very weak | 0.050 |
| Mayonnaise or oil and pickles and relish | 0.09 | negligible | 0.076 |
| Pickles and relish and salt | −0.08 | negligible | 0.10 |
| Dairy or avocado and vinegar or juice | 0.06 | negligible | 0.25 |
| Dairy or avocado and salt | 0.05 | negligible | 0.34 |
| Mayonnaise or oil and vinegar or juice | 0.04 | negligible | 0.38 |
| Mayonnaise or oil and meat or fish | 0.03 | negligible | 0.62 |
| Mustard and vinegar or juice | −0.02 | negligible | 0.74 |
| Mayonnaise or oil and salt | −0.01 | negligible | 0.86 |
| Dairy or avocado and meat or fish | 0.00 | negligible | 0.83 |
The three clearest relationships
The strongest pairs that reach rho 0.20 either way with a p-value under 0.01. Each dot is a recipe; the line joins the median of the second ingredient within each fifth of recipes ranked by the first.
Recipes with more mayonnaise or oil tend to use less dairy or avocado
rho −0.53 across 379 recipes · moderate · p under 0.001
15% of the third of recipes with the most mayonnaise or oil use some dairy or avocado, against 68% of the third with the least mayonnaise or oil.
Recipes with more mustard tend to use less meat or fish
rho −0.24 across 379 recipes · weak · p under 0.001
24% of the third of recipes with the most mustard use some meat or fish, against 47% of the 187 with no mustard.
Recipes with more meat or fish tend to use less salt
rho −0.23 across 379 recipes · weak · p under 0.001
15% of the third of recipes with the most meat or fish use some salt, against 36% of the 252 with no meat or fish.
What moves on its own
Every ingredient moves with at least one other: none has its strongest correlation under 0.15.
The pairs closest to unrelated: dairy or avocado and meat or fish (0.00), mayonnaise or oil and salt (−0.01), mustard and vinegar or juice (−0.02) and mayonnaise or oil and meat or fish (0.03).
How the numbers are made
Spearman's rho is the ordinary correlation of the two rankings, so it measures whether one amount tends to rise with the other, in a straight line or not, and a single extreme recipe moves it little. A recipe with none of an ingredient ranks lowest on it. An ingredient fewer than 12 recipes use is left out of the matrix.
The p-value is the chance of a rho at least this far from zero if the two amounts were unrelated. With 21 pairs tested, about 1.1 would pass 0.05 by chance alone even if no ingredient were related to another, which is why the relationships explained above must pass 0.01 and reach 0.20.
Every number is divided by the same count of eggs, so a recipe with few eggs for its other ingredients reads high on every one of them at once. That nudges every correlation toward positive: part of a positive rho can be the eggs, not the two ingredients. A negative one holds despite it.
A correlation describes the recipes as published. “Recipes with more mayonnaise or oil tend to use…” is a statement about what cooks write down together, not a rule that adding one forces the other. Plot any two ingredients to see the recipes behind a number.