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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

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.

boomer_joe 6y ago
Useless is an understatement.
zo1 6y ago
I spent a good 15 minutes trying to get to that data. I should have gone to the FAQ first instead of "diving" right in with excitement.
jasode 6y ago
>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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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.
  - codyb 6y ago
    I was just thinking the other day that’d it’d be interesting to be able to see what ingredients are used with eachother most often. Say for instance, you bought ground cumin for some recipe, and now you have a bunch left and dunno what to add it to. You could try randomly adding it or a database like this might give you some pretty interesting results.
  - greenie_beans 6y ago
    With that attitude, you’re missing out on the cultural and historical significance of food and ingredients. Food tells so many stories. Pepper usage could tell you things if you’re combining it with other data. There’s a lot there, with such a simple data point — class, race, ethnicity, technology, famine, publishing trends, economic output, agricultural history, climate, trends in taste — so much! Food history is not just for academic researchers.
_jal 6y ago
> Seems to be a bit useless without it. ...In the same way a dictionary is useless if you want a novel.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  No, dictionary adds value for most users, billions of people. When you come across a word you don't know the meaning of, you can look it up. Cookbook metadata DB provides value to a vanishingly small % of the people - primarily academic researchers. I am not saying that this whole enterprise is useless, I am saying that your analogy doesn't hold up.
xenonite 6y ago
also referenced from the project's FAQ: https://library.culinary.edu/primarysources/digitalfoodhistory/ https://library.culinary.edu/primarysources/digitalfoodhisto...

boomer_joe 6y ago

Useless is an understatement.

zo1 6y ago

I spent a good 15 minutes trying to get to that data. I should have gone to the FAQ first instead of "diving" right in with excitement.

jasode 6y ago

>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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.
- codyb 6y ago
  I was just thinking the other day that’d it’d be interesting to be able to see what ingredients are used with eachother most often. Say for instance, you bought ground cumin for some recipe, and now you have a bunch left and dunno what to add it to. You could try randomly adding it or a database like this might give you some pretty interesting results.
- greenie_beans 6y ago
  With that attitude, you’re missing out on the cultural and historical significance of food and ingredients. Food tells so many stories. Pepper usage could tell you things if you’re combining it with other data. There’s a lot there, with such a simple data point — class, race, ethnicity, technology, famine, publishing trends, economic output, agricultural history, climate, trends in taste — so much! Food history is not just for academic researchers.

_jal 6y ago

> Seems to be a bit useless without it. ...In the same way a dictionary is useless if you want a novel.

fermienrico 6y ago
No, dictionary adds value for most users, billions of people. When you come across a word you don't know the meaning of, you can look it up. Cookbook metadata DB provides value to a vanishingly small % of the people - primarily academic researchers. I am not saying that this whole enterprise is useless, I am saying that your analogy doesn't hold up.

xenonite 6y ago

also referenced from the project's FAQ: https://library.culinary.edu/primarysources/digitalfoodhistory/ https://library.culinary.edu/primarysources/digitalfoodhisto...