PORTFOLIO

Ragù is a project that aims to collect, catalog, and make available a precious yet often overlooked aspect of Italian culinary heritage: family cookbooks. These texts, predominantly written and passed down by women, risk being forgotten and remain in the shadows due to their semi-cultured nature. Many cookbooks have already been collected to date, coming from different geographical areas and eras. This invaluable knowledge has been gathered into a digital archive that aspires to preserve it and facilitate its dissemination. The idea for this project was conceived by Mila Fumini, a historian who, among other things, focuses on the study of women’s culinary manuscripts.

Handwritten domestic cookbooks are invaluable documents that offer a glimpse into cultures, relationships, and traditions. The digital archive of culinary knowledge is a place where decades of Italian tradition, enriched by recipes and anecdotes from the past, come together. The archive’s primary objectives are to collect, preserve, and make easily accessible the Italian cookbooks gathered through the Ragù project. The archive encourages dynamic consultation, promoting high levels of user interaction to foster broader and more active dissemination.

The digital archive is divided into two main sections, each with its own specific focus:

Homepage – Storytelling and Data Visualization

The website’s homepage employs digital storytelling, a technique particularly suited to the project’s themes. The content is organized in a narrative structure, with the red thread of history and tradition running through it. An equally important element integrated into the narrative is data visualization. The story and project are thus also told through the data collected within the project, exploring significant relationships and patterns, and presenting them within the broader context of the storytelling.

Visitors can explore the map to identify the number of recipes from each city. Additionally, they can see how often certain ingredient measurement terms are used (a reflection of how women often measured ingredients by eye, relying on experience). Users can also investigate the most common ingredient categories and discover which food types are most frequently paired together in the recipes collected so far.

Explore the Recipes – Filter and Browse

The core section of the site is the exploratory area. Users can delve into the recipes gathered and cataloged as part of the project. Recipes can be filtered by categories such as meal type, ingredients, and city of origin. Each recipe, when clicked, provides access to the related digitized image and further information.

For instance, you can explore the recipe for “Pasticcio di maccheroni” to uncover the differences between how Mrs. Dina and Mrs. Anna Maria each prepare it. You can also discover the varying names these women used to describe ingredients. Explore more intricate recipes, like “Tortellini” (with at least five different versions!), or dive into simpler, wartime recipes. You can also learn which ingredients could be substituted and which ones are irreplaceable in these traditional dishes.

Explore the website to learn more about the project and its objectives.