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The Food Chain

Factual: Food & Drink

Examining what it takes to put food on your plate

The Food Chain examines the business, science and cultural significance of food, and what it takes to put food on your plate.

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The Food Chain: The recipe collectors

Magazines & Reviews

The recipe collectors

03/03/2022 GMT

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, The recipe collectors

The challenge of preserving recipes and what is at stake if they are lost

The challenge of preserving recipes and what is at stake if they are lost.

What is a recipe? A simple question... with many answers.  It could be a set of instructions on how to make a dish – but also so much more. Recipes can reveal how we lived in the past, and how we are living today.  They are part of our sense of identity, belonging and loss and they are portals we can use to travel to different cultures.  

This week, Ruth Alexander speaks to three recipe collectors in India, Ghana and the USA to find out why they are preserving their nation’s recipes. What can you learn by documenting these culinary guides? How do you even capture a recipe that has never been written down? And what is at stake if they are lost? 

 (Picture: Cookbook with utensils. Credit: Getty/BBC) 

 If you would like to get in touch with the show please email thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk 

 
Contributors: 

 
Abena Offeh-Gyimah, writer and food entrepreneur, Ghana 

Megan Elias, cultural historian and director of the Gastronomy programme at University of Boston, USA 

Muskaan Pal, co-founder, Indian Community Cookbook Project at Flame University in Pune, India

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