Hamburger Buns Lab143 recipes

Hamburger Buns Lab

Two overlapping styles in 143 hamburger bun recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 143 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 143.

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 hamburger bun.

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 fat, less liquid to the right; 32% of the variation.
Up ↑
More salt, yeast and liquid upward; 21% of the variation.

The two groups

ALess sugar and egg

90 recipes · 63% of all 143 · median oven 375°F (190°C), 16 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 5% vs 6.3% for all

    average rank: 38th percentile of all recipes

  • Eggmedian 10% vs 13% for all

    average rank: 38th percentile of all recipes · none in 22% (all recipes 13%)

  • Fatmedian 8.8% vs 10% for all

    average rank: 38th 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
Liquid290 g275 g
Fat44 g50 g
Sugar25 g32 g
Egg50 g65 g
Salt9 g9 g
Yeast7 g8 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 sugar and egg

53 recipes · 37% of all 143 · median oven 375°F (190°C), 15 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 8.6% vs 6.3% for all

    average rank: 71st percentile of all recipes

  • Eggmedian 20% vs 13% for all

    average rank: 71st percentile of all recipes

  • Fatmedian 15% vs 10% for all

    average rank: 70th 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
Liquid235 g275 g
Fat75 g50 g
Sugar43 g32 g
Egg100 g65 g
Salt9 g9 g
Yeast9 g8 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 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 15 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 0.17 · 4 groups 0.18. 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 143, 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.