
A Database of Historical Cookbooks - sohkamyung
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-find-historic-cookbooks
======
dinamic
From project's FAQ
([https://thesifter.org/Home/Faq](https://thesifter.org/Home/Faq)):

Q: What is not in the Sifter?

A: It does not contain the texts of books or recipes.

Seems to be a bit useless without it.

~~~
jasode
_> A: It does not contain the texts of books or recipes. Seems to be a bit
useless without it._

Yes, it's "useless" if one wants the The Sifter to be a source of recipes.
Instead, the Sifter's goal appears to be a database of _meta information_ [1]
(e.g. ingredients, techniques, etc) of recipes and not the full text of
recipes themselves.

An analogy might be a website of baseball statistics[2]. Yes, one can also
complain that site is "useless" because it doesn't include videos of the
actual games. But others can use it to see when black players first appeared,
trends of batting averages, trends of pitcher rotations, etc. A researcher
wouldn't need the actual films of gameplay to answer those types of questions
and a database of meta info about baseball actually enables faster lookup.

[1] excerpt: _> The Sifter isn’t a collection of recipes, or a repository of
entire texts. Instead, it’s a multilingual database, currently 130,000-items
strong, of the ingredients, techniques, authors, and section titles included
in more than 5,000 European and U.S. cookbooks. It provides a bird’s-eye view
of long-term trends in European and American cuisines, from shifting trade
routes and dining habits to culinary fads. Search “cupcakes,” for example, and
you’ll find the term may have first popped up in Mrs. Putnam’s Receipt Book
And Young Housekeeper’s Assistant,_

[2] [https://www.baseball-reference.com/](https://www.baseball-reference.com/)

~~~
fermienrico
Hmm... how many people go oh let me check what the stats are for black pepper
in 18th century?

Baseball metrics have value on its own to a vast number of people. Cookbook
metadata has little value to most people beyond the academic researchers.

This is a poor analogy, no offense.

~~~
gavindean90
Food has a value on its own to a vast number of people. I would argue there
are far more cooks than baseball fans.

~~~
fermienrico
This isn’t about Food. It’s about a question such as “During which decade
black pepper was the most popular?”

Perhaps you can find more use cases for it? I can’t think of

~~~
wrs
This is a funny argument because I can certainly imagine myself giving
baseball statistics as a prime example of huge effort going into collecting
“useless” data! (Unless you manage a baseball team.) I don’t see how your
question is less interesting than “who had the 43rd highest batting average in
1934?”, which I’m sure there are multiple places to look up.

------
kanobo
I'm personally interested in what old fast food and junk food used to taste
like, for example the recipe to the original Coke drink:
[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/extras/the-
recipe](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/extras/the-recipe). I wish I could go
back and taste a 50's In-N-Out meal.

~~~
dutchmartin
Sounds like a great idea to start a museum (exhibition) with. You could make a
50’s restaurant with various food offerings that were popular then.

~~~
antupis
Or restaurant which copies very precisely some famous historical restaurant
menu.

~~~
JacobDotVI
You might be interested in the restaurant Next in Chicago. From the Wikipedia:

>Rather than stick with one type of cuisine, Next completely changes its style
every few months, focusing on a different time period, parts of the world, or
various abstract themes for each "season" of its menu.

Next's very first menu was "Paris 1906" which was based on Escoffier's dishes
from that year.

[https://chicago.eater.com/2011/4/4/6688919/next-
restaurants-...](https://chicago.eater.com/2011/4/4/6688919/next-restaurants-
paris-1906-menu-in-pictures)

------
helsinkiandrew
I recently read and was amazed that ”The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy“
by Hannah Glasse, published in 1747 was a best seller around the English
speaking world for over a hundred years.

“We had emancipated ourselves from the sceptre of King George, but that of
Hannah Glasse was extended without challenge over our fire-sides and dinner-
tables, with a sway far more imperative and absolute"

~~~
contingencies
Seems English tables of the 18th century were quite the culinary scene: this
is exactly contemporaneous with the famed Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4th_Earl_of_Sand...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4th_Earl_of_Sandwich#The_sandwich)

------
galkk
The more I try to cook, the deeper respect I have for historical cooks. The
things that we have for granted now, like thermometers, stoves where one could
set the level of heat were unavailable and cooking almost anything besides
very simple dishes was quite hard.

~~~
wiz21c
If you cook a lot, you'll soon realize that cooking without all the
technological advances is actually easier. After some time one develops an
instinct of how things should be be (based on color, taste, size, even sound
!). For example, if one wants too cook onions, choosing between butter and
oil, checking the colour, checking if it's cooked or not, deciding to add some
water at some point, or additional stuff to induce better Maillard's reaction,
etc. All of that you'll be able to do it without resorting to technology.

That's what I find so gratifying about cooking. After 20 years, I can now make
things that taste much better than in the past I'm not always sure of why :-)
But lots of practice sure make a difference and it's rewarded. Plus additional
bonus : you make many better moments in your life that don't cost much !

But granted, technological advances makes somethings better. For example
cooking under vacuum allows you a incredible level of control on what you do
_plus_ much healthier result.

~~~
schwartzworld
I think he's talking about more basic technology. For example, cooking eggs in
a non-stick pan is significantly easier, and even regular pans have uniform
surfaces that heat evenly.

Things like silicone cooking tools, food professors, even just ovens where you
can set a temperature are all miracle breakthroughs compared to how cooking
was done in the past.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I remember both my grandmothers cooking and I don't remember either of them
speaking about food processors or say pressure cookers in terms of "miracles".
Both grew up and learned to cook at a time when such niceties where not
available. I myself cook most of my food in simple pots and pans with simple
utensils no different than what would have been available even a thousand
years ago. Ovens are another matter- but even there, the variation between
different modern ovens (e.g. how quickly they reach a certain temperature)
means that experience with a particular oven is much more important than
precision.

So I think "miracle breakthroughs" is an exaggeration. Those are things that
are more "nice to have" than "absolutely indispensible".

If I wanted to admit to an exception- I've made mayonnaise by hand and by hand
mixer. The former is a pain in the ass and takes a lot longer. Even so, having
made it by hand I understand how the ingredients work together so I know what
to do with the hand mixer. Which is not something you can know if you've
always made it with a mixer. So you're actually losing something with too much
technology in cooking, so I think anyway.

~~~
Jtsummers
> So you're actually losing something with too much technology in cooking, so
> I think anyway.

Somewhat OT:

You're talking about cooking, but the same is true for many other activities
and systems. Our technology level permits us to ignore many details and so we
fail to learn the underlying mechanisms, processes, etc. In cooking: learning
details of the cooking process, why you can make it with a hand or stand mixer
versus by hand and what settings are appropriate in those cases. In driving:
automatic transmissions hide the details of the different gears, so people
driving in mountains and certain other conditions for the first time don't
understand why they'd use a lower gear, whereas someone driving a manual
transmission all the time would understand more easily.

Examples can be found from any field, but they all demonstrate a common theme:
Sometimes you have to do things by hand to understand what's happening before
you can apply the higher technology tooling effectively.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Agreed. My other example is animation. I studied classical animation (in
another life, another career...) and then I learned how to do 3d computer
animation. I was never very good at 3d animation (I preferred modelling) so I
can't brag about it but it's very clear to see who hasn't learned to do it the
traditional way first, e.g. when you look at character animations in games vs.
animated movies.

------
tenaciousDaniel
One of my "if I ever become insanely rich I'm doing this" ideas is to have a
culinary museum. Imagine exhibits of cooking utensils and traditions from
around the world, with guest experts who can cook some of the items for you.
So it becomes a walk/learn/sample kind of experience.

------
bakuninsbart
If I do cook german cuisine, I will usually use Henriette Davidis book, it is
detailed yet simple, and unpretentious, which I don't often find in good
cookbooks.

Apparently the db even has her book in English, so if people here are
interested in cooking german food, I think it is a really good recommendation.

One of my favorite aspects is how she will usually give recommendations about
using _everything_ that you might usually think is trash. If you're cooking on
a budget, these old cookbooks are actually incredibly helpful.

~~~
cehrlich
If you ever want to cook Austrian cuisine, the definitive book is "Die Gute
Küche" by Plachutta. If you can find a used old copy, it's pretty much in
plain text so it's very easy to run it through OCR translation.

------
airkumar
This resource is great, but only focuses on US and European
ingredients/techniques -- probably because oral traditions were much more
common back in the day in Asia/Africa.

The fact that these western recipes/techniques are more well-documented than
eastern techniques is one factor in why western cuisine has historically
received a lot more attention in restaurants/cooking schools as well as
popular media (we'll set aside colonial biases, etc for now.)

As we use structured data to draw inferences and then guide actions more and
more (ML -> AI...) the fact that databases like this skew entirely western
will lead to distorted suggestions in applications that, say, aim to generate
cooking curricula programmatically to teach cooking (I'm sure y'all can think
of better examples than that.)

I wonder if voice technology can help capture oral histories, oral traditions,
and allow those to be structured in a way that only written traditions have
been in the recent past. There is hope! We'll all be better for it, too, when
we can access the histories and traditions (many of which have been lost, or
almost lost, at this point) of the whole world, not just a small section of
it.

~~~
Finnucane
The bulk of the Schlesinger collection was donated by Julia Child from her
personal library, and yes, English-language cookbooks covering Asian and and
especially African cuisine were scarce before 1940. And Child was definitely a
Francophile when it came to food, so her collection was skewed that way.

------
bovermyer
As someone who works on a program that procedurally generates fictional
cultures, including their culinary side, this is a godsend.

It allows me to inspect patterns and the evolution of cuisine over time. This
will greatly enhance the accuracy and believeability of the generated
cultures.

~~~
airkumar
Very cool that you are generating fictional cultures! This resource only
structures Western food cultures (probably because a lot of ancient Eastern &
African histories relied on oral traditions rather than written, which has
been harder to capture and structure pre-voice tech.) As a result, the
patterns you detect and stories you generate will be limited to those Western
sources; maybe that could be interesting, but I imagine combining those with
other traditions around the world would lead to far more novel fictions.

Have you been able to find good structured data about Asian/African food? If
not, it would be cool to figure out a way to start building that sort of
database so that your stories draw from a fuller set of information and
traditions! I think voice tech and the improvement in transcriptions +
gpt3-like tools will help us start capturing and structuring oral histories
much more effectively and quickly than ever before.

~~~
bovermyer
Getting data on non-Western cultural traits and patterns has been a challenge.
I've had to rely primarily on anecdotes and articles found online.

Food history is a relatively recent study, so texts are hard to come by.

------
stareatgoats
What a treasure it would have been, recipes from several thousand cookbooks
since the turn of the first millennium or older, but alas - there are no
recipes here. This may be at best useful for laymen like me as an index for
ingredients, prior to getting the actual book from a library or similar.
Amazing example of cataloging effort though.

------
dmitriid
As a person who doesn't cook very well, the value I find in most old cookbooks
(and a surprising number of modern cookbooks) is just that: historical. And
sometimes the sadness that no one makes certain dishes anymore.

But I can't for the life of me figure something like "Stew until ready. Not
long before it's ready add finely chopped garlic" [1] or "Prepare the duck,
stuff it and stew until done" [2]

Give me times, and temperatures, and sizes, and weights! And don't start me on
the weights :D Cups, and spoons, and whatever else are not valid systems of
measure :)

[1] Moldovan Beef Stew from "Moldovan Cuisine", Eronina, Avaeva. Chisinau,
1990

[2] Stuffed Duck with Buckwheat Kasha [3] from "Jewish Cuisine", Lebowich,
Meisel. Riga, 1991.

[3] Kasha,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasha)

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Give me times, and temperatures, and sizes, and weights!

The thing is, it's pointless to give such precise instructions because they
will only ever work for one time and one time only, the time the recipe was
(presumably) tested. After that, everything you do as you carry out the
instructions in the recipe with absolute precision, like a little robot chef,
will still produce a different result not least because your ingredients are
no longer the ingredients used in the original recipe.

So for example, if someone tells you to stew a pound of beef "until ready"\-
the imprecision matches reality. Your pound of beef will not be the same as
the pound of beef of the chef who wrote the recipe. It won't be the same as my
pound of beef. It won't be the same as anyone else's pound of beef. And it
won't be ready in the same exact time as everyone else's pound of beef. Not
even if we're all eating from the same, very large, animal.

Like I say in another comment, a recipe is not a precise set of instructions
that leads to a reproducible result, like a computer program or an algorithm.
It's a template, a mnemonic, an informal description of how to achieve a
result in the ballpark of a certain target.

I think this is one reason why many people have trouble with cooking, even
when they're very good at following instructions: because they treat recipes
as instructions to be followed, rather than a discussion, a debate if you
like, between two cooks, or a source of inspiration.

~~~
dmitriid
> Like I say in another comment, a recipe is not a precise set of instructions
> that leads to a reproducible result, like a computer program or an
> algorithm. It's a template, a mnemonic, an informal description of how to
> achieve a result in the ballpark of a certain target.

Which is provably false for the vast majority of recipes. And you need a
starting point for a recipe. You can't "grab ingredients in the quantities you
desire, and cook them" if you don't know the quantities, or the temperature,
or what to look for in a finished product.

> I think this is one reason why many people have trouble with cooking, even
> when they're very good at following instructions: because they treat recipes
> as instructions to be followed

The reason people have trouble cooking is because people are not born with an
innate ability to cook. And on the contrary I think many more people cook now
precisely because the recipes are not vague incantations of ingredients.

Music and painting are not precise either. And yet, you don't expect anyone to
become a master improviser from day one.

~~~
AlotOfReading
Another thing to consider is that prior to the late 19th/20th centuries,
standardization of ingredients and quantities was not really a thing. Flour
came in different densities and gluten contents, depending on what the mill
felt like producing. Tomatoes came in different sizes and acidities depending
on the soil and weather, and neither stoves nor ovens had effective
temperature control. If they had told you to use 50g of something, that
wouldn't have meant 50g of whatever the reader had, and it certainly wouldn't
mean 50g of what _you_ can get.

Instead, the reader is expected to "fill in the gaps", a much more reasonable
expectation when everyone is cooking daily with the same few dozen ingredients
because long term preservation isn't a thing yet outside
pickling/curing/fermentation.

~~~
dmitriid
Yup, and precision instruments were not something you would have at a regular
household.

------
jungletime
Would be interesting to find obscure ingredients. Imagine discovering
something as good as chocolate. You would be a billionaire.

Garum, Rome's Favorite Condiment

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLDlUGXJMFY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLDlUGXJMFY)

------
davidmoffatt
I agree with dinamic 1. Not suitable for a blob on hacker news. It would be
cool if it had the text + translations but... Also there are some obvious
errors. One item is noted as being from a periodical from the year 4.... Hmm I
think not.

------
mem0r1
Is the database (or the underlying data) available as a SQL database, CSV, or
similar ?

------
thekyle
This isn't specifically related to this database (since it doesn't contain
recipes), but how cool would it be to finetune a GPT model on hundreds of
thousands of recipes and have it generate new ones to try.

------
newyankee
that is so amazing. A friend found an old Indian cookbook in an obscure
language which was 80 years old and realized that even some daily food evolved
so much just in the span of a century

------
citizenpaul
Clickbait garbage. First thing I look for...a database of the cookbook
recipies. Oh its just a database of cookbooks so basically a crappy version of
amazon. Not the actual information in them.

------
pelasaco
I'm confused.

On the linked site, it's tagged as gender, feminism and cookbook.. the Sifter
itself has no recipes at all? Is that some kind of trolling?

