Imagine a cyberworld of cookbooks, agricultural manuals, dietetics, herbals, etc., arranged in a database, searchable by your choice of parameters. Then imagine that this tool could return results in languages other than the original search, automatically, through a unicode glossary. And then imagine that this database would be constantly expanding to incorporate additional works and languages, with the goal of making the vast majority of culinary literature discoverable to the curious researcher. If this possibility intrigues you, then investigate The Sifter, a Wiki-like database that debuted at the 2020 OFS V-Symp.
Learn more about The Sifter
Or watch our three part series of training videos
Discover and contribute to The Sifter.
The Sifter is available to everyone for free, so please browse and search wherever your culinary curiosity leads; a world of unanticipated connections awaits you.
Having been decades in the conceiving and making, The Sifter now asks for your help in populating the database with even more information to increase its range. You’ll need to register here.
Once you have registered, you can add information to The Sifter, using its organizing principles of Author, Works, Sections, Items, and Details.To get started, some of the works already identified in The Sifter can be accessed online through various digitized libraries: see the Abbreviations list.
Of course, if you have access to other cookery literature, especially in non-Western languages, you are most welcome to enter them into the ever-expanding database. If you want suggestions about how to get started, or have specific questions, please contact us.
We will be adding more information and how-to guides to using and growing The Sifter in the near future, and we look forward to your participation as part of the Oxford Food Symposium community.
Share your Sifter thoughts, questions, and findings.
Informed, academic, interesting content welcome and encouraged from everyone.
Anyone is able to contribute to this discussion although you will need to log-in (using your 2020 VSymp account details) or sign-up for an account first.
Please keep the discussion within the topic. The thread with all comments will remain live for a rich mix of thoughts and ideas to develop.
