Want to Know Where Ingredients in a Recipe Originated? Try This.

For the past few weeks I’ve been corresponding with Wilfried Hou Je Bek who has an interesting off-beat blog called Cryptoforestry. He’s been developing some nifty tools that might be of interest to many readers of this blog. (They’re available on twitter (@socialfiction) too).

The first allows you to map where the ingredients in a given recipe originated. Here’s a map of the origin of the ingredients in mole.

And now he’s moved on to another tool, the ingredient spectrum.   Take several versions of a recipe and enter the ingredients to find the spectrum of ingredients that people have used.

Wilfried is the first to admit that these tools are far from perfect. But they’re huge fun and, more important, a potentially incredibly useful tool for the food historian.

EDIT.  Wilfried’s working on these tools.  I’ve removed the broken link to the ingredient spectrum. So go straight to his blog where you’ll find his latest ruminations.

Enjoy.

• ← Culinary History Award, International Association of Culinary Professionals
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