Gallery: 25 Amazing Food Infographics, Drawn From 49,733 Recipes
012111FF-foodnetwork-opener-Detail-1
A detail from a chart showing all 49,733 recipes. The curved axis shows the rating, and the x-axis shows the number of reviews. For the huge, full version, look at the post below.
022111FF-foodnetwork-opener-Detail-2
The circumference of the circles represent the number of ingredients in each recipe. For the huge, full version, look at the post below.
032111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-4
By querying our database, we were able to figure out exactly how many pounds of various proteins existed on the site. The single bull's testicle was from a recipe for Rocky Mountain Oysters.
042111FF-foodnetwork-oD2DC87
One of the more novel analyses we did: We looked at recipes of various types, such as sandwiches, and tallied their averages if they included bacon and if they did not. Almost everything improves with bacon, except finicky cream sauces and deserts, which cause the bacon fat to congeal.
052111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-5
We figured that a good way to see what proteins people were eating was to add up the amounts of chicken, beef, and pork called for on the whole site. Fish was far less popular.
062111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-23
A chart showing the top-three chefs by total chicken called for in their recipes, multiplied by the number of reviews for each rating. You'll notice that they're all women—presumably because female celebrity chefs try to cook healthier.
072111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-13
A bar chart showing the overall average rating for several of Food Network's top chefs. We were contractually disallowed from looking at ratings for chefs not current on air, such as Mario Batali.
082111FF-foodnetwork-online-r4-11
Here, we grouped various types of recipes, and analyzed how well each chef did for each grouping. Note the scale, which was necessary to tease out differences since the data were so tightly clustered.
092111FF-foodnetwork-online-r4-10
Women in general did better with lighter meals—which makes sense, given how they tend to cook healthier, as we saw in the previous chicken chart.
102111FF-foodnetwork-online-r4-9
The highest-rated chef was Jeff Mauro, Food Network's so-called Sandwich King. Nothing beats a good sandwich!
112111FF-foodnetwork-online-r4-7
Giada de Laurentiis was another strong all-around performer.
122111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-30
Here, we mapped all of the 906,539 ratings on the entirely of Foodnetwork.com, yielding a topological map of the website's user base.
132111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-291
We then went further by calculating the cities with the highest percentage of reviews dedicated to a particular food, such steak.
142111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-281
Here's the map for lobster. As you can see, thee maps tend to confirm common intuitions about regional food preferences--in this case, the idea that people on the coasts eat more seafood...
152111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-241
...while Texans simply love chili.
162111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-10
A handy chart showing you exactly what to prepare, and when. Each recipe mentioned is the top-rated recipe in its category.
17TG-4
We realized that prep time vs. number of ingredients was a good way to map the relatively complexity of similar dishes. Here are four top-rated stuffing recipes...
182111FF-foodnetwork-TG-3
...and four top-rated pumpkin pie recipes. Unless you've got time and money to burn, may we suggest keeping it simple?
192111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-11
A chart of the site's top-rated turkey recipes, and how their preparation regiments compare.
202111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-12
A chart of all the pie recipes on Foodnetwork.com, which gives a pretty good indicator of what pies there's most demand for.
212111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-6
One of the more interesting findings we uncovered: Food with more ingredients reliably turns out better.
222111FF-foodnetwork-o#51C973
We also looked a food fads, by charting the portion of their ratings that accrued over each quarter. Here, you can see three trends that seem to be going pretty strong...
232111FF-foodnetwork-o#51C976
...and here are two trends that were very much fads of the mid-2000's.
242111FF-foodnetwork-o#51C978
And three trends that seem just to be gaining steam in recent years.
252111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-3
One of the more revealing analyses: A look at the recipes with the highest standard deviations on the site--basically, a short-hand for which recipes were most controversial, based on wide variability in ratings. Some of this is driven by viral jokes. For example, the reviews for Late Night Bacon have become something of a mini-meme.
262111FF-foodnetwork-online-r3-7
We couldn't resist doing some wonky calculations, such as the length of all the spaghetti in all the recipes called for on the site. We actually counted how many strands of spaghetti come in a typical box of Barilla No.9 spaghetti!
