The #Menuverse

The New York Public Library is making available for download a vast collection of restaurant menus. Here are some visualizations I done of this data. At full size the images are clearer but these are the cropped ones. Another set of images maps historic mushroom use.

Menuverse 1: 

Simple maps of the Menuverse: it shows menu-pages (blue dots) and their dishes (white dots). As the numbers grow the Menuverse becomes more nebulous and interconnected, no dish is alone. 

#Menuverse 2

The next images show if menu pages share a dish. When running it over a small number of dishes the Menuverse has a well-defined structure but soon it all curls up again into a big knot. This I tried to overcome by tweaking the parameters. Later images connect the menu pages only if they share at least 10 or even 25 recipes. 

#Menuverse3

These images show what type of ingredients are matched with what other types as reported by the name of dish. It is color-coded (meat, dairy, vegetables, alcoholic drinks) but I forgot by what code.