The Food Timeline

[Jmahl]

A friend referred me to this site. A great research tool

The Food Timeline compiled by Lynne Olver, librarian at the Morris County Library in NJ. Check it out.

Jmahl

[emmalish]

Cool, I love stuff like this! I've only browsed through it quickly, but I'm surprised at how much older (or more recent) some things are than I thought.

[gingerbeer]

Wow this is so cool! Thanks! I've been hoping to learn more about food history so this is perfect.

[Peter the eater]

I've had that most excellent site bookmarked for over a year now and have referred to it many times.

I'd like to see the same thing created from a country other than the USA.

[MaxH]

It's a great idea and valuable resource. Unfortunately at present, there's a graphical pitfall in the Food Timeline, which I didn't understand until corresponding with its creator. Coming as a new reader without presuppositions, I'm surprised not to see the issue (detailed below) explained clearly out front. It will be important to casual readers, depending on how they use the site. It's them I'm concerned about (not regular users, who know how the site works.)

The "Timeline" display is an index of links to online sources. It's not actually a timeline (a sequence of events). I noticed a conflict between these two missions, because "Dates" of publications in the righthand column may or may not have the meaning they usually imply with such subject matter.

For instance Brillat-Savarin's treatise is listed under the date usually given (1826 or end of 1825). But contemporary US writers, who dominated the US cookbook scene until the 1900s, Mary Randolph and Eliza Leslie, are listed under dates much later than publication, because their links happen to point to later editions (of which there were many). The Virginia Housewife didn't appear in 1838, Eliza Leslie's famous Directions for Cookery in 1840, or her earlier Seventy-Five Receipts in 1832. These books were actually published years earlier. But anyone reading the display as history (i.e., "Timeline,") as I did, may get the impression Randolph wrote years after Brillat, when actually she preceded him. The real first editions aren't rare, they're cheaply available in reprints, they just don't happen to be what this site points to. Also, some comparably important works are just missing (I assume because lacking convenient online source), including the same Eliza Leslie's popular US French cookbook adapting original French recipes to US kitchens, 130 years before Julia Child followed in her footsteps.

Lynne Olver is aware of this conflict. I just wish something could be done about it, because the visual impact of graphical date information is powerful.

[Fat Guy]

I found it an excellent resource when working on "Asian Dining Rules" and, indeed, thanked its creator in the acknowledgments!

[gingerbeer]

It's a great idea and valuable resource.  Unfortunately at present, there's a graphical pitfall in the Food Timeline, which I didn't understand until corresponding with its creator.  Coming as a new reader without presuppositions, I'm surprised not to see the issue (detailed below) explained clearly out front.  It will be important to casual readers, depending on how they use the site.  It's them I'm concerned about (not regular users, who know how the site works.)

The "Timeline" display is an index of links to online sources.  It's not actually a timeline (a sequence of events).  I noticed a conflict between these two missions, because "Dates" of publications in the righthand column may or may not have the meaning they usually imply with such subject matter.

For instance Brillat-Savarin's treatise is listed under the date usually given (1826 or end of 1825).  But contemporary US writers, who dominated the US cookbook scene until the 1900s, Mary Randolph and Eliza Leslie, are listed under dates much later than publication, because their links happen to point to later editions (of which there were many).  The Virginia Housewife didn't appear in 1838, Eliza Leslie's famous Directions for Cookery in 1840, or her earlier Seventy-Five Receipts in 1832.  These books were actually published years earlier.  But anyone reading the display as history (i.e., "Timeline,") as I did, may get the impression Randolph wrote years after Brillat, when actually she preceded him.  The real first editions aren't rare, they're cheaply available in reprints, they just don't happen to be what this site points to.  Also, some comparably important works are just missing (I assume because lacking convenient online source), including the same Eliza Leslie's popular US French cookbook adapting original French recipes to US kitchens, 130 years before Julia Child followed in her footsteps. 

Lynne Olver is aware of this conflict.  I just wish something could be done about it, because the visual impact of graphical date information is powerful.

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Wow, ok, that's important to know, because I totally misunderstood it.

[MaxH]

...

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Wow, ok, that's important to know, because I totally misunderstood it.

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As I did also, and I doubt we're alone, which is why I wrote to Lynne Olver. I'm not sure if Lynne yet sees what an issue this could be. A strong graphic that people naturally read in a certain way must be prepared with that reading in mind, or if for some reason that's impossible, the real meaning should be made very plain. Instead, there are declarations like "Information is checked against standard reference tools for accuracy ...," potentially deepening any date misimpressions. (All of which seems to me incongruous in a site so well organized in other respects.)