The cookbooks comprising more than 7,700 pages are to be transcribed, reviewed, and tagged online. The documents provide valuable insights into everyday historical practices, dietary habits, and culinary knowledge from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.
What are the aims of the project?
This crowdsourcing project aims to improve access to a collection held by the Wien Museum, which has so far only been partially catalogued. Due to the often challenging handwritten texts and the use of historical Kurrent script, much of the material remains difficult to access. By engaging interested volunteers in the transcription and annotation process, the collection can be made significantly more accessible. Once completed, all transcribed recipes will be freely available to the public and searchable by keyword categories (such as pies and pastries, flour-based and sweet dishes, vegetarian recipes, and more), enabling both academic research and culinary exploration.
How can you participate in the project?
The handwritten texts in the cookbooks are transcribed on a page-by-page basis. During or after the transcription process, individual recipes and ingredients are identified and tagged (“Capture”). The resulting data is then verified by other contributors (“Review”). This workflow makes it possible to explore the completed recipe collection using various filters and to search for specific ingredients and other recipe-related information.
