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Tom Tran
Updated: Oct 24, 2021
We visualize BBC Food Cuisines’ recipes from all over the world.
Reddit user u/damsterick did a great job of creating a pipeline for processing the data and producing the charts (also available at the end of this page). You can go down the bar charts to see which ingredients are most frequently used. However, I wanted to create something that pops immediately when you see it. Using the same pipeline and a word cloud approach, I ended up with the charts below.
You can immediately see that soy sauce and spring onion are the most popular ingredients in Chinese cuisine. We represent frequency as the size of the text instead of the bar length for bar chart. For Southeast Asian food like Thai, garlic, chilli, lime and fish sauce are required!
You can see more cuisines below.
Summary of Most Common Ingredients in Cuisines (most common first):
American: black pepper, garlic, olive oil, onion, butter, oregano, plain flour, lemon, thyme, parsley, ketchup, milk, chilli, worcestershire sauce, carrot
British: black pepper, onion, butter, plain flour, thyme, garlic, olive oil, carrot, egg, parsley, milk, beef stock, celery, vegetable oil, chicken stock
Chinese: soy sauce, spring onion, ginger, garlic, sesame oil, chilli, dry sherry, cornflour, black pepper, vegetable oil, pepper, white pepper, chicken stock, noodles, egg
French: black pepper, butter, garlic, olive oil, onion, parsley, thyme, shallot, white wine, plain flour, chicken stock, red wine, egg, lemon, double cream
Indian: garlic, onion, ginger, cumin, chilli, turmeric, vegetable oil, coriander, garam masala, chilli powder, fresh coriander, black pepper, yoghurt, cardamom, cinnamon
Italian: olive oil, black pepper, garlic, parmesan, onion, butter, parsley, basil, egg, chopped tomatoes, lemon, chilli, white wine, carrot, celery
Mexican: garlic, chilli, black pepper, lime, cumin, onion, olive oil, fresh coriander, red onion, pepper, avocado, oregano, coriander, soured cream, flour tortilla
North African: garlic, onion, olive oil, black pepper, cumin, cinnamon, coriander, parsley, fresh coriander, turmeric, lemon, chicken stock, saffron, ground ginger, couscous
Thai and Southeast Asian: chilli, garlic, lime, fish sauce, ginger, coconut milk, lemongrass, soy sauce, shallot, coriander, vegetable oil, spring onion, fresh coriander, peanuts, black pepper
Turkish and Middle Eastern: black pepper, olive oil, garlic, cumin, yoghurt, lemon, mint, onion, chilli, pomegranate, coriander, pepper, parsley, red onion, cinnamon
Source: BBC Food. Github repo.
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