About the Archive

The Inherited Table is a primary-source archive of world foodways. It documents recipes, oral histories, and material culture through original evidence: recorded interviews with tradition-bearers, photographed family manuscripts, and objects recorded with their findspots. The archive collects sources that are not otherwise available in published scholarship, and describes them to a consistent standard so that they can be cited.

The governing distinction is between secondary compilation and primary documentation. A recipe transcribed from an existing publication is not collected. What is collected is first-hand evidence carrying a recorded chain of transmission or custody: an interview in which a cook accounts for how a dish was learned, and from whom; an unpublished manuscript with its ownership history; or an object documented at its source. The aim is to preserve, as citable evidence, culinary knowledge that is held privately and transmitted informally, and that is for those reasons vulnerable to loss.

Sources collected

• Oral history: a recorded and transcribed interview with a tradition-bearer, documenting transmission.
• Manuscript: an unpublished, handwritten recipe document, photographed in full, with its custodial history.
• Material culture: a tool, vessel, mould, or sherd, photographed with a scale and recorded with its provenance or findspot.

Sources and Method

Description follows the Dublin Core metadata element set, adapted with interviewee and interviewer fields for oral history after the practice of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and with manuscript-description fields after the Manuscript Cookbooks Survey. Every published entry records, at minimum, the following.

Identification

A stable accession number and the entry type (oral history, manuscript, or material culture).

Provenance

The chain of transmission for oral history, or the chain of custody for manuscripts and objects.

Description

Title, contributor, narrator or compiler, date and place, language, and a scholarly abstract.

The source

A verbatim transcript for oral history, or a diplomatic transcription with a full photographic facsimile for manuscripts and objects.

Access

Controlled-vocabulary subject terms, and spatial and temporal coverage.

Rights

A consent record and a suggested citation.

The two records circulated to contributors as the training template are nos. 1 and 2 in the catalogue.

Advisory Board

The Inherited Table is compiled and edited by students, with academic oversight. The advisory board reviews editorial standards and historical claims; it does not author entries.

Yong Chen · Professor of History, University of California, Irvine; author of Chop Suey, USA: The Story of Chinese Food in America (Columbia University Press, 2014). Advises on method, sourcing, and historical accuracy. A second advisory seat in food history or material culture is being added.

Entries are reviewed by trained student editors for provenance, consent, subject terms, and citation before publication. Historical claims are checked against the scholarly literature. The default license is CC BY-NC 4.0.