Vanilla Cake Lab126 recipes

Vanilla Cake Lab

No clear styles in 126 vanilla cake recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 126 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 126.

The best split found, into two groups, has a silhouette of 0.16, 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, fat and sugar to the right; 26% of the variation.
Up ↑
More liquid and salt upward; 21% of the variation.

The two ends of the spread

AMore fat and egg

74 recipes · 59% of all 126 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 28 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Fatmedian 73% vs 66% for all

    average rank: 67th percentile of all recipes

  • Eggmedian 63% vs 56% for all

    average rank: 65th percentile of all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 116% vs 108% for all

    average rank: 62nd percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 300 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Sugar350 g325 g
Fat220 g200 g
Egg190 g170 g
Liquid240 g245 g
Leavening12 g12 g
Salt3 g3 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 300 g of flour.

Closest to the middle of the group

BLess fat and egg

52 recipes · 41% of all 126 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 33 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Fatmedian 56% vs 66% for all

    average rank: 26th percentile of all recipes

  • Eggmedian 47% vs 56% for all

    average rank: 28th percentile of all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 97% vs 108% for all

    average rank: 33rd percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 300 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Sugar290 g325 g
Fat170 g200 g
Egg140 g170 g
Liquid250 g245 g
Leavening11 g12 g
Salt3 g3 g

Each line is the group's median for that ingredient, scaled to 300 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 13 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 0.16 · 3 groups 0.16 · 4 groups 0.14. 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 126, 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.