ResearchBuzz

It’s not uncommon at all for me to get several of the same kinds of search resources at once in my e-mail, but it’s very unusual for me to get several different resources devoted to the same topic at the same time. In the last couple of weeks, though, I’ve found and heard about three different resources devoted to wine.

The SF Gate had an article about Able Grape ( http://www.ablegrape.com/ ), a search engine of about ten million pages devoted to wine. This specialized search engine scored about a C on the Strawberry Shortcake test; an astounding number of wineries apparently have their own recipes for strawberry shortcake. A search for northern California generated much better results with over 11,000 results discussing vineyards, retailers, and wine-related media.

Speaking of northern California, there’s WineMap at http://winemap.org/ , which will open to the general public on March 1st. WineMap is collecting information on wineries and where grapes are grown, and placing that information on a map. If you can’t wait for the site to open, you can already download its database to use in Google Earth.

Finally, there’s WineMad, at http://winemad.net/ . WineMad is a wine reviews aggregator and custom Google search engine that’s currently indexing 900 wine Web sites and blogs. The front page lists recent wine reviews and articles, with additional tabs for red wine reviews, white/rose/sparkling wine reviews, and cheese articles and reviews (of course). A blog for this search tool is available at http://winemad.wordpress.com/ .

These sites look interesting and useful for the wine connoisseur; I can’t judge completely however as I am more of a root beer kind of person.

Trying to figure out what you’re going to do with half a leftover turkey and fifteen pounds of sweet potatoes? Yahoo wants to help you out with its newly-announced search shortcut for recipes.

The search is in the form of a syntax: just search for an ingredient and the word recipes and you’ll get links to recipes and cuisine types at the top of the search results page. A search for mushroom recipes, for example, returns Sausage and Mushroom Soup, Tofu with Tomato-Mushroom Sauce, and other recipes from Food & Wine and EatingWell.com. (Currently 14 different providers are being used for the recipes.) Recipes have ratings, and some of the listings I saw (beef recipes) broke out the available recipes into cuisines.

Multiple-word queries get mixed results. If, for example, I try chicken and mushroom recipes, I will get recipe links at the top of the results page. chicken and avocado recipes brings just regular search results, however.

In addition to searching for ingredients you can also search for types of cuisine. A search for Italian olive recipes found goodies like Rosemary Focaccia with Olives and Osso Buco with Tomatoes, Olives, and Gremolata. Alas, Italian olive and chicken recipes did not provide a shortcut.

There are also some special dietary considerations you can use in your search as well, though they appear more limited. Try low fat recipes, or vegan recipes, or kosher recipes, or gluten free recipes. You can search for types of recipes, within reason. Try stew recipes or greens recipes. I also had a limited amount of success searching by cooking method — broil recipes or deep fried recipes.

The only bad thing about this shortcut is that it doesn’t seem able to handle lots of ingredients. I guess if I look in the fridge and all I have is an onion, some leftover ham, and a half-a-jar of olives, I could use Cookin’ With Google or a regular Web search. On the other hand, if I need a quick recipe for a mud pie and don’t need to fool with ingredients, this Yahoo shortcut is fast and useful!

And in our “the Internet is completely lovely” department, we have the Transportation Library Menu Collection, an online collection that contains over 375 menus from 54 national and international airline carriers, cruise ships, and railroad companies. It’s available at http://www.library.northwestern.edu/transportation/digital-collections/menus/ .

There is a keyword search I found it all but impossible to use; it’s searching collections en masse, it appears. There’s also a list of carriers that I much preferred. I chose Western Airlines, which had three menus (from 1966 and 1970) available. I chose the one from 1966. (I’d love the ability to browse/search by date; I hope I didn’t just miss the search engine.)

The menus are presented as page images. Ooo, a fiesta cart! A variety of alcoholic beverages were available for your enjoyment along with steaklike things, piqued green beans — sorry, piquant green beans — a fruit and cheese basket, and coffee. The 1970s ones are a bit more daring (Tahitian lambchop?) with a design that just screams macrame, hand-lettering, and unrepentant use of the word groovy.

Pop culture, history, and the romance of flying before it became such a commodity make this a wonderful browse. Some of these menus are very extensive, like one Trans World menu I saw from 1975. A tart on that menu is described as having “a hint of kirsch.” Who knew that over thirty years later we’d see a hint of kitsch as well?