When in Japan, food is everything. What’s the local specialty? What’s the best omiyage? But have you stopped and wondered “What were people eating 200 years ago?” Well the Center for Open Data in the Humanities might be able to help you with that. They’ve been working on a dataset of 100+ recipes from an Edo period (1603-1868) collection from 1785.

Starting with egg recipes, they’ve been releasing the information from the dataset on CookPad, Japan’s most popular cooking site.

Combined with some professional photos of modern attempts at the recipes, you can get a sense of what some early modern Japanese might have had on their tables! The main page of the Edo period recipes can be found here, and Sora News 24 also translated a couple into English.

Happy weekend cooking!