Baking up a storm...

This week's blogging topic was a really conducive prompt for thinking through some of the topics I have been mulling over lately. What counts as an artifact?  Ever since Professor Hartel came to share her knowledge on ethnography with the class, and her research on the organization practices of home cooks (2010), I can't stop thinking about food as a research topic within the context of information studies! Food is definitely a theme/subject/universe of which I am very fond. Does food count as an artifact? Maybe not the object itself, but perhaps food metadata? This could include written recipes or recipe books. Some of the first cookbooks are amazing historical artifacts, including the Forme of Cury, which was written by King Richard II's royal cooks!

When I have some spare time (when was that, anyway?), my childhood friend and I watch the Great British Bake Off. If you haven't watched any of the episodes, imagine gently competitive reality TV. Not a shred of kitchen drama abound among the contestants, who instead let their baking skills do the talking, and battle the clock each episode to produce three creations of pastry perfection (and pie, and cake, and tarts, and cookies, and...well it's a challenging show to watch if you're hungry! Eating sweets before or during the show is advisable...). As per usual in any competitive show, a contestant is chucked each week, and eventually, the winner emerges triumphant.

However much of a guilty pleasure type of show this may be (it's not the most critically engaging, and mostly a light watch), the real magic is subtly tucked within each episode. While the contestants plug away, a few minutes of historical tidbits are embedded, often related to the recipes being worked on. The history of specific baked goods are detailed, often featuring food historians, archivists, librarians, and other researchers and food enthusiasts, who discuss origins, ingredients, tools used to make the dish, social contexts, money, and more.

If I could research any artifact, it would be inspired by this process, examining food as an artifact. How to analyze a cake? Perhaps starting with the ingredients, and their relevancy in creating meaning from the cake itself. I would have to choose a specific sort of cake. What sorts of situations is the cake used for? Who makes it? Who eats it? Is there only one kind of cake, or are there multiple variations? What about recipes? One of the most interesting things about baking is the variety of recipe versions for one dish, which each baker swears by, over the others. Where did the cake originate? How did the regional situation affect the kinds of ingredients used? Where is the cake made today? Where are the recipes published? Are recipes used at all, or is it passed through word of mouth, or by feel? Many bakers do not use recipes at all, but navigate the baking experience by a sense of touch (if it "looks right" in consistency and texture), smell, and even taste.  What can be learned from the process of cake making and baking? As Professor Hartel revealed, the culinary world can be an amazing field for studying informational organization, so that is where I would love to go exploring.

References

Hartel, J. (2010). Managing documents at home for serious leisure: A case study of the hobby of  gourmet cooking. Journal of Documentation, 66(6), 847-874.