Category:Recipe Books ?

Question

A new member of Project:Louisiana posed an interesting question: "Wonder if I'll see any of the names in my grandma's recipe books on here?" (Thanks Laurie!)

Which got me thinking... I have several contribution-based recipe books, from people/places both known & unknown. I think the names in a contribution-based recipe book would be worth categorizing. But how? Probably by community (e.g., under a One Place Study of the town, if an OPS exists), but I think they could stand alone too, as either a space page (lots of names, most not with WikiTree profiles) or just a category page (fewer than a score or so of names of people without WikiTree profiles - those with profiles can simply be in the category).

I'm thinking [[Category:Recipe Books]] could be top-level, with three major sub-categories: Family Recipe Books, Community Recipe Books, Organization Recipe Books.

The space/category page of, say, a Family Recipe Book could also be categorized under a One Name Study, and maybe also a location category, if the Family was strongly identified with a particular place. Pages for Community and Organization books could also be categorized by location.

So what do y'all think? Good idea or no?

edit: added the tag recipe_books and a link: Category: Recipe Books

edit2: [20 Years of The Wooden Spoon...]

Comments

Hello Liz, we already have two relevant categories for this:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Ancestral_Recipes

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Genealogy_Books

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Thanks! I hadn't thought of Category:Genealogy Books (cuz they're really not) and I wasn't thinking of going the recipe route - but nice to know about it. I think there are a couple that I might contribute there.

Cheers, Liz

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I love it! Thank you so much. I have Talk About Good, and one without a cover that might be called Acadiana - can't remember, but it has great line drawings of dancing vegetables. My mom has River Road. I'd love to see how this goes!

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I agree that Recipe Books is different enough from Genealogy Books to warrant a separate subcategory. I think it could go under Category: Books, which is where Genealogy Books is now. My mom used to do these kinds of recipe books as fundraisers throughout my childhood, so I'm actually really excited about this idea.  We moved around a lot (I'm a military brat), so she has a collection from all over. Nice thinking!

 

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Love this idea, Liz! Those collections can have so much information. I agree they need their own category. Under books makes sense, as well as if the individual organizations/churches have categories. Profiles for books makes sense, too. Some places published every several years, so they might be able to be on the same page. I could see something like cemeteries, where people in the book who are id'd could be in a table with what information was found as well as linked to profiles if one is created on WT. I have a large collection I could eventually add from my grandparents.

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I would suggest folding Category: Genealogy Books into the more comprehensive  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Source

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What does this post has to do with One_Name_Studies? Please be thoughtful when using tags as otherwise we will still get all sorts of posts that don't interest us.

Thank you!

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I'm sorry to have annoyed you Andreas, but I did put some thought into the tags that I used. I included ONS & OPS because these community/family collections of recipes often have genealogical gems & could be of interest to members of a Name study or Place stucy when the recipe books are particular to a family or a place. As mentioned in the original question: "...a Family Recipe Book could also be categorized under a One Name Study,..."

Answer 1

Liz,

Most of the recipe books I have that might fit this idea were collected and printed as fund raisers for a church, school or local organization.  Each recipe is listed with a contributor.  So one method would be a free space for the book with a some images from the book and a list of names with comments.

The free space would be categorized under location - this would be sufficient because it is location that is most important.  For completeness cross categorization could be done under school or churches or organization (these are existing) and  a new category - that you have proposed Recipe Books.

Based on my experience in the development of these kind of thing I suggest that for openers - just do a couple of books, categorize under location and group and then wait and see if there is an interest.  Having completed one it can stand as a guide for future books.  If there is not sufficient interest in doing a number of books there is no need to spend the time developing the rest of the category hierarchy.

Comments

Thanks Philip! Great suggestions. I have two books in mind & can do that for. Cheers, Liz

Answer 2

I'm liking it.  Since you brought it up, I looked in a family recipe book an uncle collated some time ago and found a couple of relatives I had forgotten about.

Comments

That's amazing Robert!

Answer 3

This became a tangent of my genealogy research, I collect all Franco-American cookbooks that I can find - French-Canadian, Acadien, Cajun and French-American. See: http://habitantheritage.org/french-canadian_resources/french_and_french-canadian_recipes.  The French-Canadian group here which I belong to has a potluck every year. The tourtiere is a big favorite but I bring maple-syrup chicken breasts which is also very popular.

Comments

I forgot to mention there is a magazine "Louisiana Cooking" which has a lot of Cajun & Creole recipes.

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The category Steven shared appears to be for recipes:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Ancestral_Recipes

The ones you mention have me drooling LOL

I wasn't going to go the recipe route, just the contributors.

I like Philip's suggestion to start with just a page for the book under the relevant location & see how it goes from there.

Cheers, Liz

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hehehe, there are as many recipes for tourtière as there are regions in the province.  

Answer 4

I think this is an extremely fun idea for a project.  I really like these kinds of things that bring color and life to the era we are talking about.  I agree it would be a good idea to have a FreeSpace profile for the book and then maybe a category to match?  I will have to go look through my old small-town cookbooks and see what I can find.

Answer 5

I was thinking of what to suggest as a "naming guide" - what do y'all think about

Title, Contributors, Location, Year

While there might be oodles of compilation recipe books using the same title, by including the group, location, and year would pretty much guarantee a unique name for each space/category page.

So, for instance, if a DAR chapter published a recipe book, its page(s) would be named (hypothetically)

Best Loved Recipes, DAR Bill of Rights Chapter, Virginia, 2008

For USA locations, I think that including a county/city would make the category name too bulky. But, as Phil mentioned, location is going to be key, so the category page itself would need to include appropriate location category/categories (more specific than just "Virginia", which is a top-level category anyway). Following the categorization hierarchy of the One Name Study project, we could then have Category:Virginia, Recipe Books to help people find them.

Comments

Just went and found the book I was thinking of doing - wow. About 150 or so contributors. Still, that's a pretty good number of profiles for a single category. A practical example then:

Space: Twenty Years of The Wooden Spoon, The Daily Leader, Brookhaven, Mississippi, 1997

Category:Twenty Years of The Wooden Spoon, The Daily Leader, Brookhaven, Mississippi, 1997

I held to Title, Contributors, Location, Year suggestion, but I really wanted to have Brookhaven in the title!

Maybe just suggest Title, Contributors, Location, Year and just suggest that people balance length and specificness (instead of suggesting what level to include for location)?

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And . . . see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Recipe_Books - currently with just 1 profile: Twenty Years of The Wooden Spoon, The Daily Leader, Brookhaven, Mississippi, 1997

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would it be appropriate to include https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Recipe_Books under https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Family_Heirlooms ?

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I like the idea. Mentioning the free-space page on profiles adds interest to the profile.

Sources usually have Author (Last Name first) followed by Title. I think  a better choice would be:

Contributors, Title, Location, Year 

Answer 6

Hi! Crispin just asked if I had typed in all the info on the page I created for [The Wooden Spoon]. Yes, yes I did. But it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'm really good with Word, so

• I typed it up with Word using just tabs between the name/number of entries & hard return for each line,
• then converted it to a Word table,
• which I copied into Excel,
• then copied the Excel data into [this tool], which I believe Magnus created.

That tool is wonderful - put in Excel data and get back a wiki-coded table.

Cheers, Liz

Comments

I have one of these created by the historical society of a city in MN. Some of the recipes have little notes like "So and so has been the doctor here for this many years". Any suggestions on how to deal with those extra bits of information?

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Ideally, on the person's WikiTree profile. The cookbook I did included genealogical info on only a few people, which I included in the text. If there had been snippits about lots of the contributors, I would have added a third column in the table for the information.

Answer 7

I've added The Green and Gold Cookery Book to the Category Recipe Books. This book has been a standard in Australian kitchens for nearly a century and is still for sale.