Tell Me What You Eat, and I Will Tell You Where You Come From: A Data Science Approach for Global Recipe Data on the Web

Thousands of recipes, representing different national cuisines, from the site recipesource.com were analyzed with the aim of understanding the food culture of various countries by comparing the ingredients used in their food. The recipe analysis identified ingredients and their frequencies of use in the creation of unique recipes. Food analyzer, the program developed in this paper, used data from recipes to examine correlations between individual food ingredients in recipes. This paper found that: 1) each country or ethnic group used authentic ingredients that differed from others and 2) the groupings of these authentic ingredients were essentially location-dependent. The boundaries of food-relevant areas were closely related to levels of precipitation. Meaningful correlations characterizing the food culture of each area can be explained by these authentic ingredients in recipes.