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#1 Posted : Wednesday, October 29, 2025 10:18:31 PM(UTC)

I didn't see an existing thread for this--so I just thought I'd start one. I've started member indexing again for the first time in several years, and Jenny already approved two titles and has been helping me, but I still have questions that I can't always find the answer to in the documentation, and I could bother her with questions via email, but I keep having email technical issues. So I was wondering if it's okay to just ask them in the forum.


1) I can't seem to recall--do all New Orleans recipes always get the Cajun & Creole tag or would they sometimes just get the American South ethnicity tag? Like at the moment I'm just indexing a crawfish bisque recipe.

#2 Posted : Thursday, October 30, 2025 1:23:10 PM(UTC)
While I lean toward Cajun & Creole for crawfish bisque, I believe it is a strong “no” for all New Orleans recipes. The recipe types list has bananas Foster as American. John Besh is mostly not, Alon Shaya is Israeli, Susan Spicer is all over the styles, Popeye’s is American South.
IOW, I recommend looking at each recipe independently.
#3 Posted : Thursday, October 30, 2025 3:02:40 PM(UTC)

DromJohn;50952 wrote:
While I lean toward Cajun & Creole for crawfish bisque, I believe it is a strong “no” for all New Orleans recipes. The recipe types list has bananas Foster as American. John Besh is mostly not, Alon Shaya is Israeli, Susan Spicer is all over the styles, Popeye’s is American South. IOW, I recommend looking at each recipe independently.
Thanks, John. That makes sense.

#4 Posted : Friday, October 31, 2025 1:28:09 PM(UTC)
It so happened that I indexed a Tropical bananas Foster (American, Caribbean) yesterday and decided to compare it to the original from an Irish restaurant in New Orleans. EYB (not member) indexed bananas Foster as Creole and Cajun.
#5 Posted : Friday, October 31, 2025 2:26:03 PM(UTC)

DromJohn;50957 wrote:
It so happened that I indexed a Tropical bananas Foster (American, Caribbean) yesterday and decided to compare it to the original from an Irish restaurant in New Orleans. EYB (not member) indexed bananas Foster as Creole and Cajun.
Well, there are lots of inconsistencies/errors in EYB--so when I'm searching the database for an example of how to index something, I still take whatever I see in the database with a grain of salt and consult the indexing guidelines. I also should review the old feedback messages from Sydney because they were packed with information and real indexing "minutae". I think I can still find some of her old messages. How is your indexing coming along, or did you cover that in another thread? I like your methods for organizing/tackling such a big project.

#6 Posted : Saturday, November 1, 2025 10:26:44 AM(UTC)

All the indexing on EYB is done by humans so there may be inconsistencies in the category tagging. We do try to give a lot of guidance on category tags in the manual but not everyone reads the manual. And of course we may make mistakes ourselves in the manual! We are always happy to make corrections to errors that members spot. Just email us.

Thopugh I'm not sure Bananas Foster being tagged as Creole is an error. The dish was invented at Brennan's, a French-Creole restaurant in New Orleans. The recipe on NYT Cooking states that the recipe was first published in the Times in 1957 in an article on New Orleans-style Creole cooking. I completely agree though that every recipe originating from NOLA is not a Cajun & Creole recipe. Please do let us know any corrections you feel are needed. 

#7 Posted : Friday, November 7, 2025 12:26:55 PM(UTC)

Now what's the deal with recipes for cleaning products and other inedibles? I see that a new recipe type that was added earlier this year. In the past I occasionally indexed a recipe for a wreath or potpourri or some such using the [non-edible] tag. I think I was told that was fine for the odd recipe in a book for an inedible item containing edible ingredients, but I never got the impression that we were really encouraged to do that en masse.



So in the current book I'm indexing I've finished indexing all 46 food recipes, and all that remains are a few household recipes (spiced rose potpourri, holiday potpourri, and a few more recipes for bubble bath and bath oil). Actually, no specific cleaning products. Of course, the bulk of the ingredients--soaps, oils, flowers, and spices--probably are already in the database, but I didn't check every one yet. Should I request new ingredients and index the five recipes or just leave them be?

#8 Posted : Friday, November 7, 2025 6:24:28 PM(UTC)

Please just email me - directly - jenny at eatyourbooks at dot com - I have a drafted email to you - I approved the books - but was answering your questions in the email. You may not get correct answers here. I sent the email now.


Here is the "meat" of the email. 


Regarding ethnicity on recipes. For example all recipes in a New Orleans book do not get Cajun/Creole. For example:  i.e., beef broth in a New Orleans or Chinese book does not make it Cajun/Creole or Chinese - the book is classified as that. We have this all the time with Member Indexers because books are geared toward children - some Indexers want to classify each recipe as children/baby food. 


Regarding page numbers xii - no we do not add anything - but we can add a comment. You handled that correctly.


Regarding recipes that are not specifically guaranteed to work recipes - we write a note on the book - and I will do that for Like Water for Chocolate. (We had a satire book - and had the same issue.)

Regarding NI for cleaning products - add it as usual in comments and I will handle it.
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