How this atlas is made

What is in it

2,843 ferments, with 2,206 documented well enough to have their own page with animated steps. The rest are listed in full on theirkind and regionpages, and each gets its own page once its sources give enough detail. The entries cite 8,051 distinct sources.

How the research is done

AI research assistants search and read published sources: protected-origin specifications, Codex and national standards, tested recipes from food-safety agencies and university extension services, peer-reviewed studies, theses and archives, in many languages. They record each step, each number with its unit, and where it came from. Encyclopedias are used as an outline, never as the only source for a number on a full page.

Every entry is then checked before it is published:

• Every DOI, PubMed Central id and web link a source gives is looked up to confirm it exists and matches the citation.
• A validator checks every value's units and ranges, and that each temperature, salt and pH number matches the text recorded with it.
• Samples of values are checked by hand against their sources, and safety limits such as starting pH and salt for fish need a food-safety authority as the source.
• An automatic audit plays every step in a browser, so each scene loads, moves and shows what the step describes.

How the pictures are made

Food images are made with an image model and checked against reference photographs of the real food; vessels are rendered from 3D models. They show what a food or vessel looks like, not one producer's product or a photograph of it. A physics engine in your browser moves them, so salt lands where gravity puts it and sticks where a surface is wet. The photographs on entry pages are real and credited. See the animation library.

What the labels mean

Measured

Measured in a study.

Set

Fixed by a specification or tested recipe.

Reported

One source reports it.

Typical

A general value, not sourced for this ferment.

Unconfirmed

Not yet checked against a source.

Unconfirmed values are shown as text, not as numbers, so you can see what is still missing.

When repeated searches find no source for part of a page, such as a ferment's history or the microbes in it, the page says so in one plain line instead of filling the gap with a guess or with figures from a different product.

What it is not

The atlas describes how ferments are traditionally and commercially made. It is not a food-safety guide. For home preserving, follow a tested recipe from a food-safety authority such as the USDA National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Found an error?

Write to us through the contact page, naming the ferment and the value. Corrections are checked against the source and fixed.