Ever wondered what it would take to make say 80 different burgers? or 39 different ice cream flavours?Well in reality it doesn't take much, not having a any good taste helps. Furthermore it doesn't actually take that many toppings.
What we're looking at is a simple combination formula. Each ingredient can be combined with a certain number of ingredients to make a burger with say 4 toppings.
Where n is the number of available toppings, and r is the number of toppings on the burger. We can further simplify this to encompass all possible combinations, or all possible burgers. Since each topping can be either on or off the burger each topping takes one of two options. Multiple that by the two options of the next topping and you get
So a typical burger joint that offers tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, mustard, relish, mayo, ketchup, onions, cheese and bacon can make an astounding 1024 different burgers. The math is really that simple.
Ok so let's be fair, those are really condiments, and not really different burgers. However to be able to claim 80 different burgers we would only need 7 different fixings.
Similarly Baskin Robbins doesn't need much to claim 39 different flavours. Just Vanilla ice cream and some walnuts, chocolate chips, pecans, caramel and marshmallows makes 32 different flavours. So what we really need to do is measure the available ingredients to properly compare.
This ice cream shop I visited in Nice, France had everything from tomato, to bread, to rose ice cream. Just flavours nothing added, now that's impressive.
