Taste Does Not Endure: Network Science Dynamics of Food Recipes from 1977-2017

Food recipes can be modeled as complex systems composed of individual parts, such as ingredients, preparation techniques, and recipe titles, which are linked to each other. This stream of literature has acknowledged the relevance of using historical approaches that but only a few studies have done so. This paper uses a newly collected recipe dataset spanning 1977-2017 to show that taste, represented as a set of ingredient combinations, varies over time. These changes can be broadly attributed to culture, as it establishes patterns that influence ingredient choice. This paper shows two different categories of ingredients using network science of food recipes and qualitative analysis of other sources to illustrate these changes. The first corresponds to animal proteins and evidences the impact Lent, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve in the selection of ingredients. The second, focusing on sweeteners, shows how the centrality of sugar is being challenged as substitutes such as honey and sugarloaf gained ground in recent years, reflecting debates on health and the negative impacts of sugar. This research advances the literature demonstrating the importance of considering historical approaches to understand food culture, which changes along with beliefs, economics, politics, and taste. Moreover, it shows that models that overly simplify the evolution of food recipes fail to account for meaningful changes. I also stress the importance of truly multidisciplinary approaches that use food recipe data along with evidence from qualitative sources otherwise meaningful changes can be overlooked by focusing only on the most frequently used ingredients in recipes.

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