Distant Reader - subject-cookery-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-24 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 12 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 663,449 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 55,287 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 103. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

take, put, water, make, little, sugar, two, will, let, one, half, three, well, boil, together, good, till, may, pound, butter, white, much, four, wine, dish, salt, lay, fire, eggs, set, must, small, cold, ounce, cut, beat, keep, sweet, boyl, cream, pint, fine, ounces, serve, liquor, strain, drink, close, beaten, dry

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are A choice manual, or Rare secrets in physick and chirurgery: collected, & practised by the Right Honourable the Countesse of Kent, late deceased. Whereto are added several experiments of the vertue of Gascon powder, and lapis contra yarvam by a professor of physick. As also most exquisite ways of preserving, conserving, candying &c., A choice manual of rare and select secrets in physick and chyrurgery collected and practised by the Right Honorable, the Countesse of Kent, late deceased ; as also most exquisite ways of preserving, conserving, candying, &c. ; published by W.I., Gent., and The true preserver and restorer of health being a choice collection of select and experienced remedies for all distempers incident to men, women, and children : selected from and experienced by the most famous physicians and chyrurgeons in Europe : together with Excellent directions for cookery ... : with the description of an ingenious and useful engin for dressing of meat and for distilling th[e] choicest cordial waters with-out wood coals, candle or oyl : published for the publick good / by G. Hartman..

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

one ounce, well together, white wine, two ounces, one pound, little salt, fair water, fine sugar, four ounces, take two, will make, sweet herbs, one handful, take three, large mace, take half, put thereto, take one, sweet butter, grated bread, two drams, two spoonfuls, stand till, three pints, take away, good quantity, good store, one dram, three spoonfuls, may put, two pound, three ounces, claret wine, thin slices, two handfuls, will cover, much sugar, little sugar, fine powder, two quarts, take four, four hours, earthen pot, morning fasting, next day, will keep, three quarters, every morning, soft fire, hard eggs

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are The queen-like closet; or, Rich cabinet stored with all manner of rare receipts for preserving, candying & cookery. Very pleasant and beneficial to all ingenious persons of the female sex. By Hannah Wolley. The gentlewomans companion; or, A guide to the female sex containing directions of behaviour, in all places, companies, relations, and conditions, from their childhood down to old age: viz. As, children to parents. Scholars to governours. Single to servants. Virgins to suitors. Married to husbands. Huswifes to the house Mistresses to servants. Mothers to children. Widows to the world Prudent to all. With letters and discourses upon all occasions. Whereunto is added, a guide for cook-maids, dairy-maids, chamber-maids, and all others that go to service. The whole being an exact rule for the female sex in general. By Hannah Woolley., and The cook''s guide: or, Rare receipts for cookery Published and set forth particularly for ladies and gentlwomen; being very beneficial for all those that desire the true way of dressing of all sorts of flesh, fowles, and fish; the best directions for all manner of kickshaws, and the most ho-good sawces: whereby noble persons and others in their hospitalities may be gratified in their gusto''s. Never before printed. By Hannah Wolley..

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

sugar, mace, eggs, cream, butter, water, vinegar, sun, pie, wine, syrup, salt, liquor, lady, thyme, pye, oysters, nutmeg, medicine, dish, white, veal, tcp, sack, roses, paste, oyl, oven, mortar, fire, cloves, ale, woman, vessel, table, sweet, stone, stomach, spirit, spice, servants, rosewater, rosemary, rose, roots, remedy, pudding, powder, pound, plums

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be water, and The gentlewomans companion; or, A guide to the female sex containing directions of behaviour, in all places, companies, relations, and conditions, from their childhood down to old age: viz. As, children to parents. Scholars to governours. Single to servants. Virgins to suitors. Married to husbands. Huswifes to the house Mistresses to servants. Mothers to children. Widows to the world Prudent to all. With letters and discourses upon all occasions. Whereunto is added, a guide for cook-maids, dairy-maids, chamber-maids, and all others that go to service. The whole being an exact rule for the female sex in general. By Hannah Woolley. is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

water, pound, fire, ounce, pint, dish, ounces, wine, handful, quantity, hour, eggs, quarter, salt, time, sugar, butter, half, day, hours, roots, morning, spoonfuls, milk, quart, yolks, pot, days, meat, bread, liquor, herbs, powder, flowers, broth, piece, night, way, leaves, while, cloth, times, pieces, juice, paste, bottom, slices, self, whites, seeds

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

take, put, be, is, make, let, boil, have, are, lay, set, beat, keep, cut, serve, being, strain, beaten, stand, do, boyl, bake, drink, pour, season, boiled, made, cover, dry, stir, sliced, was, wash, boyle, boyled, use, give, mix, stew, please, grated, come, preserve, fill, minced, mingle, eat, fry, work, taken

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

sugar, butter, cream, salt, wine, water, nutmeg, eggs, mace, rose, ginger, liquor, mutton, ale, pepper, cloves, rosemary, ●, vinegar, currans, oyl, dish, honey, paste, sack, rosewater, sun, syrup, cinamon, oven, orange, cinnamon, pie, veal, marrow, almonds, nutmegs, egg, white, lady, beef, limon, broth, juyce, roses, pye, pippins, flower, parsley, sage

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

it, them, you, your, they, i, their, her, his, he, my, him, she, me, we, our, its, themselves, thy, himself, us, one, thee, hers, yours, mine, ●, whereof, theirs, tart, ours, ib, ''s, ys, yieldeth, ye, whey, hem, em, boyle

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

little, good, white, much, small, cold, fine, sweet, hot, other, clean, warm, more, best, thick, whole, thin, red, great, same, strong, large, fair, excellent, many, green, clear, new, dry, fresh, first, tender, such, few, ready, full, close, hard, next, enough, several, soft, earthen, long, black, like, better, fit, young, quick

then, very, so, well, together, not, in, up, as, out, off, again, also, away, first, much, close, too, enough, more, thus, thereof, most, almost, all, over, still, down, often, about, long, only, finely, therein, gently, never, now, before, else, once, on, half, fast, little, altogether, therefore, hard, pretty, softly, always

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

Thank you for using the Distant Reader.