Data Suite

20

Dishes

16 published

38

Recipes

editorial + contributed

7

Oral Histories

3 live · 4 pending

8

Contributors

2 moderators

x

Analysis-bearing variables

This platform launched in beta in August 2026. Records reflect editorial seeding with some early contributions.

Featured Export Bundles

◫

Dishes Dataset

Canonical dish records with aliases, type classifications, and recipe/oral history counts.

~18 KB · CSV / JSON

🍲

Recipes Dataset

Full recipe records with ingredients, provenance, geographic anchoring, and pseudonymized contributor IDs.

~42 KB · CSV / JSON / .dta / .rds

⬛

Full Archive

All tables bundled — dishes, recipes, oral histories, and GeoJSON — in a single archive.

~180 KB · .zip

Dataset Breakdown

Dish types

Recipe source types

How to Cite

⌕

Dish Name ↕	Aliases	Types	Recipes	Oral Histories	Cooks	Eats	Knows	Never Heard	Appearances	Taxonomy Node	Status	Updated

← Dishes ›

About the Taxonomy

The Culinary Atlas uses a numeric coding schema to classify dishes along multiple axes: primary cooking method, macro ingredient category, preparation tradition, and more.

Each dish receives a taxonomy_codes JSON object (stored on the dishes table) with keys like main_method, macro, and prep. These codes also determine the quilt color index used for visual display in the Atlas.

The taxonomy was created for the live documentary German Soul, to research and discover connections between Soul Food, and food from Germany, West Africa, and the Caribbean. Once fully developed for this use case, the taxonomy will join the atlas in becoming a powerful resource for food scholars worldwide.

⌘

Taxonomy Structure Coming Soon

The full taxonomy web and attribute filter interface will appear here once the specification is ready for presentation, use, and feedback. This section will become a navigable web. For now, you can explore the atlas and data suite to see how we attend deeply to analytical power when building this resource.

For all atlas, data, and taxonomy-related queries, including information on where the taxonomy is and how it is being developed, please email team.culinaryatlas@gmail.com. We always welcome thoughtful engagement with our research.

Fair-Source Data Access

The Southern Culinary Atlas is built on community trust. Contributors share recipes, oral histories, and cultural knowledge because they believe this archive will honor their stories — not exploit them.

We believe in free and fair information. We also believe in protecting this information from extraction by large corporations, advertisers, and AI training pipelines that strip context from culture. For that reason, the Atlas dataset is licensed fair-source rather than open-source, and all downloads are password-protected.

We are actively looking for collaborators and feedback-givers during this period of strong growth. If you want access to the dataset, we are happy to provide it — and we ask that you offer something to the Atlas in return. This can be:

Advising & feedback · Publicity & audience · Contribution solicitation
Archive or resource access/permissions · Connections & networking
Technical support · Fiscal support

Email team.culinaryatlas@gmail.com for access to the database.

Click anywhere to continue

Password Required

Dataset downloads are password-protected. Contact team.culinaryatlas@gmail.com to request access.

◫

Dishes

Canonical Records · 20 rows

Canonical dish names, aliases, type classifications, recipe and oral history counts, taxonomy codes, and editorial metadata. No PII.

v0.1.0 · ~18 KB Privacy notice

🍲

Recipes

Contributed + Editorial · 38 rows

Recipe titles, linked dish IDs, ingredients, steps, provenance metadata, geographic region, dietary tags, and pseudonymized contributor IDs.

v0.1.0 · ~42 KB Privacy notice

📖

Oral Histories

Contributed · 7 rows (approved)

Story text, linked dish IDs, geographic regions, structured prompt-response fields, and pseudonymized contributor IDs.

v0.1.0 · ~28 KB Privacy notice

🗺

County Density Map

Geographic · 12 counties

County-level contribution density as GeoJSON. Compatible with QGIS, ArcGIS, Mapbox, and Leaflet.

v0.1.0 · ~88 KB Privacy notice

⬛

Full Archive Bundle

All tables · dishes + recipes + oral histories + map

Everything above in a single .zip with a README.txt, data dictionary, and citation guidance.

v0.1.0 · ~180 KB estimated Privacy notice

How to Cite This Dataset

See per

Dishes per Location

This view pivots the full dataset so researchers can examine any cross-section. Select your dependent variable (what you're counting) and independent variable (what you're grouping by), then browse the resulting table.

Examples: recipes per dish, dishes per location, oral histories per contributor, relationships per location, media per editorial source.

Pivot engine preview — full cross-tabulation coming soon.

Coming soon

This page is still being written.

We're finishing this part of the documentation. Email us if you need it sooner.

Get in touch