Rebecca Federman and Ben Vershbow at the New York Public Library to get their wish, which have thrown an epic match for tens of thousands of people who went, enjoyed the food and then, as the perfect guest, made all dishes.
For Mr. Vershbow, the digital lab manager of the library, and Ms. Federman, his culinary librarian, “washing dishes” implies no soap or water. But it does require a little effort: The process of transcribing the 10,000 menus at the online gallery of the library to make it a complete database search that can be browsed by dish, drink or price, and the name and date.
home his public effort, What’s on the menu?, And has brought together thousands of participants. “The ferocity of the response we’ve had is unbelievable,” said Vershbow, who said he and Ms. Federman only spread the word through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Metafilter. Overall, 65,182 volunteers have written on plates of 887 menus since the site went up last Monday.
“For people who love food, write the contents of a menu of age is a strange emotion,” Mr Vershbow said, “and I think people jump on an opportunity to be communion with the past. ”
After more than a year of brainstorming, the project took a step toward reality this month in the library won a scholarship $ 50,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop an online transcription tool. There are also plans to create data displays of types of food, for example, a map of the variety of oysters or a study of “eating up” on trains and boats. The library also plans to analyze the menus remaining 30,000 or less in its vast collection.
task of transcribing the dishes and the price sounds pretty simple, but some of the menus, most of which date from the early part of the 20 are handwritten in Florida, vanished italics. On March 1, 1900 offers lunch in the lining of the Red Star Line ocean, for example, illegible delegate after the course of cheese. Camembert
Another challenge is the nature of hunger-inducing of the work. “People always say” I’m hungry! “” said Federman, whose own stomach starts to shake at the mention of “anything described as” served on toasted bread. “”
Some of the restaurants represented in the collection, as Keynes Steakhouse, are still open, largely unchanged, but the overall feel of the menu navigation is a simultaneous nostalgia and discovery.
“The food is ready, or not known at the same time,” Ms. Federman said. pea soup, date pudding, beef ribs? Comforting. Chow chow, cream of Victoria, braised box? Intriguing.
A volunteer, David Cervera, published Monday in Twitter a series of revelations about their menu transcripts. “Fun and addictive!” He wrote. “If I could go back to 1900, and $ 20, I could eat like a king!”
original cache of 25,000 menus in the collection gathered over 25 years and donated in 1900 by Frank E. Buttolph, a woman whose hobby was visiting New York restaurants and caterers are for overseas.
“She says frankly that does not care two pins of the lists of foods on their menus, but its historical interest is everything,” said The New York Times in an article in 1904 about it.
Fittingly, members of the army of transcription have begun to imagine what the project in their communities. Mr. Vershbow said he received an email from a student in Portland, Oregon, the day after what is on the menu? began.
“She wanted a party where guests transcription can carry laptops, place your transcript and eat dishes from the menus,” Vershbow said.