Zucchini Bread Lab243 recipes

Zucchini Bread Lab

Two styles in 243 zucchini bread recipes

Leave the recipe names aside and group the 243 recipes by their 7 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 243.

The data splits best into two groups, and they separate: a silhouette of 0.31, on a scale where 0 is no separation and 1 is complete. They still touch at the edges, so a recipe near a boundary could sit in either.

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 sugar, egg and fat to the right; 35% of the variation.
Up ↑
More spice and salt, less leavening upward; 19% of the variation.

Along the first direction sugar, egg, fat and zucchini 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

AClose to the overall median

192 recipes · 79% of all 243 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 55 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 90% vs 96% for all

    average rank: 42nd percentile of all recipes

  • Eggmedian 40% vs 44% for all

    average rank: 42nd percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 250 g flour

Median recipe of group A in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup AAll
Zucchini200 g220 g
Sugar225 g240 g
Fat120 g130 g
Egg100 g110 g
Spice3 g3 g
Leavening8 g8 g
Salt3.5 g3.5 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 sugar and egg

51 recipes · 21% of all 243 · median oven 350°F (175°C), 55 min

Where it differs from all recipes

  • Sugarmedian 129% vs 96% for all

    average rank: 81st percentile of all recipes

  • Eggmedian 67% vs 44% for all

    average rank: 81st percentile of all recipes

  • Fatmedian 78% vs 52% for all

    average rank: 79th percentile of all recipes

Its median recipe, at 250 g flour

Median recipe of group B in grams, against the median of all recipes
IngredientGroup BAll
Zucchini320 g220 g
Sugar325 g240 g
Fat195 g130 g
Egg165 g110 g
Spice2 g3 g
Leavening11 g8 g
Salt4.5 g3.5 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 25 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 0.31 · 3 groups 0.15 · 4 groups 0.15. 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 243, 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.