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The Cookbook and Home Economics Collection

180 points by zhte415 5y ago

AudienceFakeout 5y ago
It's amazing to see how different French cookery was before the early 20th century. We had another similar transformation starting in the late '60s - you would never confuse salt with seasoning but today seasoning seems to mean salting. It's quite bizarre, I don't like these culinary neologisms and refuse to use them or accept authorities who do as knowledgeable.
Fezzik 5y ago
This looks amazing. One of my favorite antiques in my grandparents’ house was a late 1800s/early 1900s homesteading “cookbook” that had basic step-by-step instructions for regular vegetable gardening to how to trap and prepare a squirrel. It was full of awesome survivalist tidbits that were just treated as basic skills everyone should have.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
nkozyra 5y ago
Now to take every recipe from this, GPT3 up a 2,500 word meandering story punctuated with 12 banner ads and at the very bottom ... the actual recipe.
- dvaun 5y ago
  https://thisrecipedoesnotexist.com/ https://thisrecipedoesnotexist.com/ might have a shot at this
  - axaxs 5y ago
    I thought for sure this was meant for a joke and would DNS error. I'm beyond excited it actually exists...thanks!
    - dvaun 5y ago
      Anytime! I checked the availability of the domain after reading the parent comment about GPT-3. Seeing that it was registered, it didn’t hurt to see if it was built into a service yet :)
  - RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
    I can't wait to make one of these. Perhaps: https://thisrecipedoesnotexist.com/50734 https://thisrecipedoesnotexist.com/50734
    - GavinMcG 5y ago
      I like this one: https://thisrecipedoesnotexist.com/58969 https://thisrecipedoesnotexist.com/58969 With wonderful instructions including: - 1 banana - peeled, pitted and sliced - Beat 2 tablespoons peach preserves into peach preserves. - Cool and continue baking 25 minutes in the refrigerator.
      - RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
        So.. How do we do this? Do we need to put the fridge in the oven? The oven in the fridge? Is being in the oven 'baking'? Can we further refine the algorithm by having people try recipes so it learns what is possible?
DantesKite 5y ago
It's ironic. Software has affected almost aspect of our lives, except cooking. You have all these recipes, but no real great way to determine the best version of something. There are certain techniques (simple techniques) that'll make steak and coffee taste better, but they're hidden amidst a vast empire of information and useless knowledge. There's another aspect that people rarely think about: 100 years from now, will humans still be cooking food? Or will that be regulated to machines? If so, you'll need a way to keep track of all the recipes and what humans enjoy the most. You need a way to filter what's good from what's great. And when you zoom out, it's a problem that's common to GoodReads, Netflix, and information in general. How do determine what people will like? And how do you grade it?
- arsome 5y ago
  I think nuance and novelty are too significant in the cooking world to ever allow machines to take over 100% of cooking unless they offer incredible levels of flexibility. We tend to get bored of even the "best" flavors and the "best" is highly subjective. I can't speak for everyone, but feed me my favourite food, even my 5 favourites and I'll be sick of them all by day 10.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >100 years from now, will humans still be cooking food? Or will that be regulated to machines? Of course we will. Cooking is not just enjoyable, but a unique expression of someone's personality. I come from a food-oriented Italian family and your entire comment just blows my mind.
  - eafkuor 5y ago
    I'm also Italian (from Italy, not "my great grandpa was half Italian"), if some robot can make me parmigiana di melanzane as good as I can make it, I'll never cook it again.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
      You’ll spend the same the same amount of time cleaning it instead.
axaxs 5y ago
While I respect the idea of seeing what we used to make, and how, from my experience old recipes belong as a relic. Many old recipes use wildly imprecise measuresments, ingredients or tools that no longer even exist, and frankly...are bland. We have access today to so many more ingredients than in the past, and most modern recipes are much more flavorful as a result. I think we really take for granted the globalisation of foods and spices. Editing based on a reply: This is also survivorship bias. Basically, any old recipe worth keeping is still being printed and/or improved upon in today's recipes.
- staticautomatic 5y ago
  Much more flavorful? In what way? This strikes me as a really naive perspective on cooking. Also, FYI, “globalization of foods and spices” has been going on since the early days of the Silk Road.
  - axaxs 5y ago
    I'm basing it on personal experience, with grandparents and further back recipes. I don't think something like avocados even existed here, or any type of spicy pepper. I'm a spicehead, and nothing has any at all. Or much say, umami. Meat and potatoes. Meat and green beans. Add salt or bland spice, if you're lucky. It's basically all I ate growing up. Today I can buy Nashville hot spice in a can, for example. I'm sure you can find examples of some things existing in some places. But the silk road didn't run through rural midwest. Edit to add: Speaking of avocados, and complex favors...imagine a perfect guacamole. With avocados, and spicy peppers, garlic, onion, etc. Does a recipe exist for such a thing before say, 1960?
    - steaknsteak 5y ago
      In regards to your edit, avocados and chili peppers both originate in Mexico. Guacamole was a native dish so it's been around for centuries, but the modern version with onions and cilantro couldn't have existed until the Spanish brought those ingredients to Mexico
vavooom 5y ago
A health recipe book for diabetes immediately stood out. Would be interesting to see the changes in certain “health” foods/ recipes across time. More importantly, which have stood the test of time?
mastazi 5y ago
Similar efforts: - The Sifter, a food history research tool https://thesifter.org/ https://thesifter.org/ - Indian Community Cookbooks https://communitycookbooks.wixsite.com/website https://communitycookbooks.wixsite.com/website
- tomcam 5y ago
  Oh, man, the Indian one. Thanks tons
colordrops 5y ago
How is the copyright issue dealt with for more recent books? There are many from as recent as 2009.
- zelse 5y ago
  Books under copyright in IA are either available to borrow digitally, in which case they're packaged with Adobe DRM, or are restricted to the blind, in which case they're restricted with Daisy DRM. A quick look suggests these are the former - mousing over them will show "Book to Borrow."
audiometry 5y ago
Randomly opened page of chinese cookbook from 1917. https://archive.org/details/chinesecookbook00chan/page/90/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/chinesecookbook00chan/page/90/mo... It was a recipe for 'Raw Fish Party' (Yue Sang). [page 90] Sounded to me like "Yu Sheng" or "Lo Hei" which we have in Singapore around Chinese New Year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusheng https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusheng Curiously the Wikipedia says this was 'created and popularized' in the 1960s. But the recipe, although not the same thing, is similar (big mound of grated carrot, radish, topped with stuff for crunch, some fish, some oil, some spices). No idea what 'Chinese Chow Chow' is, nor the frequently-cited 'Fun Wine' mentioned in numerous other recipes of that book.
soco 5y ago
PLATINAE PE KONEStA f^mangaierat.mtme uerofiradif buumres^mh TtmKiMHtdsfri^ddeflO' htmda^in eapadmriat tisd^deriftH (real quote from the oldest book on file, as digitized by Google)
somberi 5y ago
This podcast (1) helped me appreciate the intelligence and the mandate of the originators of Home Economics as a vocation. Founding team includes the first woman engineer from MIT. Edited: Added the book (2) whose author was interviewed for the podcast. (1) https://omny.fm/shows/gastropod/easy-a-the-superrad-story-of-home-economics https://omny.fm/shows/gastropod/easy-a-the-superrad-story-of... (2) https://bookshop.org/books/the-secret-history-of-home-economics-how-trailblazing-women-harnessed-the-power-of-home-and-changed-the-way-we-live/9781324004493 https://bookshop.org/books/the-secret-history-of-home-econom...

180 points by zhte415 5y ago

It's amazing to see how different French cookery was before the early 20th century. We had another similar transformation starting in the late '60s - you would never confuse salt with seasoning but today seasoning seems to mean salting. It's quite bizarre, I don't like these culinary neologisms and refuse to use them or accept authorities who do as knowledgeable.

Fezzik 5y ago

This looks amazing. One of my favorite antiques in my grandparents’ house was a late 1800s/early 1900s homesteading “cookbook” that had basic step-by-step instructions for regular vegetable gardening to how to trap and prepare a squirrel. It was full of awesome survivalist tidbits that were just treated as basic skills everyone should have.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

nkozyra 5y ago

Now to take every recipe from this, GPT3 up a 2,500 word meandering story punctuated with 12 banner ads and at the very bottom ... the actual recipe.

dvaun 5y ago
https://thisrecipedoesnotexist.com/ https://thisrecipedoesnotexist.com/ might have a shot at this
- axaxs 5y ago
  I thought for sure this was meant for a joke and would DNS error. I'm beyond excited it actually exists...thanks!
  - dvaun 5y ago
    Anytime! I checked the availability of the domain after reading the parent comment about GPT-3. Seeing that it was registered, it didn’t hurt to see if it was built into a service yet :)
- RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
  I can't wait to make one of these. Perhaps: https://thisrecipedoesnotexist.com/50734 https://thisrecipedoesnotexist.com/50734
  - GavinMcG 5y ago
    I like this one: https://thisrecipedoesnotexist.com/58969 https://thisrecipedoesnotexist.com/58969 With wonderful instructions including: - 1 banana - peeled, pitted and sliced - Beat 2 tablespoons peach preserves into peach preserves. - Cool and continue baking 25 minutes in the refrigerator.
    - RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
      So.. How do we do this? Do we need to put the fridge in the oven? The oven in the fridge? Is being in the oven 'baking'? Can we further refine the algorithm by having people try recipes so it learns what is possible?

DantesKite 5y ago

It's ironic. Software has affected almost aspect of our lives, except cooking. You have all these recipes, but no real great way to determine the best version of something. There are certain techniques (simple techniques) that'll make steak and coffee taste better, but they're hidden amidst a vast empire of information and useless knowledge. There's another aspect that people rarely think about: 100 years from now, will humans still be cooking food? Or will that be regulated to machines? If so, you'll need a way to keep track of all the recipes and what humans enjoy the most. You need a way to filter what's good from what's great. And when you zoom out, it's a problem that's common to GoodReads, Netflix, and information in general. How do determine what people will like? And how do you grade it?

arsome 5y ago
I think nuance and novelty are too significant in the cooking world to ever allow machines to take over 100% of cooking unless they offer incredible levels of flexibility. We tend to get bored of even the "best" flavors and the "best" is highly subjective. I can't speak for everyone, but feed me my favourite food, even my 5 favourites and I'll be sick of them all by day 10.
AussieWog93 5y ago
>100 years from now, will humans still be cooking food? Or will that be regulated to machines? Of course we will. Cooking is not just enjoyable, but a unique expression of someone's personality. I come from a food-oriented Italian family and your entire comment just blows my mind.
- eafkuor 5y ago
  I'm also Italian (from Italy, not "my great grandpa was half Italian"), if some robot can make me parmigiana di melanzane as good as I can make it, I'll never cook it again.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
    You’ll spend the same the same amount of time cleaning it instead.

axaxs 5y ago

While I respect the idea of seeing what we used to make, and how, from my experience old recipes belong as a relic. Many old recipes use wildly imprecise measuresments, ingredients or tools that no longer even exist, and frankly...are bland. We have access today to so many more ingredients than in the past, and most modern recipes are much more flavorful as a result. I think we really take for granted the globalisation of foods and spices. Editing based on a reply: This is also survivorship bias. Basically, any old recipe worth keeping is still being printed and/or improved upon in today's recipes.

staticautomatic 5y ago
Much more flavorful? In what way? This strikes me as a really naive perspective on cooking. Also, FYI, “globalization of foods and spices” has been going on since the early days of the Silk Road.
- axaxs 5y ago
  I'm basing it on personal experience, with grandparents and further back recipes. I don't think something like avocados even existed here, or any type of spicy pepper. I'm a spicehead, and nothing has any at all. Or much say, umami. Meat and potatoes. Meat and green beans. Add salt or bland spice, if you're lucky. It's basically all I ate growing up. Today I can buy Nashville hot spice in a can, for example. I'm sure you can find examples of some things existing in some places. But the silk road didn't run through rural midwest. Edit to add: Speaking of avocados, and complex favors...imagine a perfect guacamole. With avocados, and spicy peppers, garlic, onion, etc. Does a recipe exist for such a thing before say, 1960?
  - steaknsteak 5y ago
    In regards to your edit, avocados and chili peppers both originate in Mexico. Guacamole was a native dish so it's been around for centuries, but the modern version with onions and cilantro couldn't have existed until the Spanish brought those ingredients to Mexico

vavooom 5y ago

A health recipe book for diabetes immediately stood out. Would be interesting to see the changes in certain “health” foods/ recipes across time. More importantly, which have stood the test of time?

mastazi 5y ago

Similar efforts: - The Sifter, a food history research tool https://thesifter.org/ https://thesifter.org/ - Indian Community Cookbooks https://communitycookbooks.wixsite.com/website https://communitycookbooks.wixsite.com/website

tomcam 5y ago
Oh, man, the Indian one. Thanks tons

colordrops 5y ago

How is the copyright issue dealt with for more recent books? There are many from as recent as 2009.

zelse 5y ago
Books under copyright in IA are either available to borrow digitally, in which case they're packaged with Adobe DRM, or are restricted to the blind, in which case they're restricted with Daisy DRM. A quick look suggests these are the former - mousing over them will show "Book to Borrow."

audiometry 5y ago

Randomly opened page of chinese cookbook from 1917. https://archive.org/details/chinesecookbook00chan/page/90/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/chinesecookbook00chan/page/90/mo... It was a recipe for 'Raw Fish Party' (Yue Sang). [page 90] Sounded to me like "Yu Sheng" or "Lo Hei" which we have in Singapore around Chinese New Year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusheng https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusheng Curiously the Wikipedia says this was 'created and popularized' in the 1960s. But the recipe, although not the same thing, is similar (big mound of grated carrot, radish, topped with stuff for crunch, some fish, some oil, some spices). No idea what 'Chinese Chow Chow' is, nor the frequently-cited 'Fun Wine' mentioned in numerous other recipes of that book.

soco 5y ago

PLATINAE PE KONEStA f^mangaierat.mtme uerofiradif buumres^mh TtmKiMHtdsfri^ddeflO' htmda^in eapadmriat tisd^deriftH (real quote from the oldest book on file, as digitized by Google)

somberi 5y ago

This podcast (1) helped me appreciate the intelligence and the mandate of the originators of Home Economics as a vocation. Founding team includes the first woman engineer from MIT. Edited: Added the book (2) whose author was interviewed for the podcast. (1) https://omny.fm/shows/gastropod/easy-a-the-superrad-story-of-home-economics https://omny.fm/shows/gastropod/easy-a-the-superrad-story-of... (2) https://bookshop.org/books/the-secret-history-of-home-economics-how-trailblazing-women-harnessed-the-power-of-home-and-changed-the-way-we-live/9781324004493 https://bookshop.org/books/the-secret-history-of-home-econom...