Taxonomy — Cuisines
329 culinary traditions across six classification axes
Cuisine Classification
Cuisines are an orthogonal axis to the dish-type taxonomy. While domains classify recipes by what kind of dish they are, cuisines classify them by which culinary tradition they belong to. A single recipe type can belong to multiple cuisines (e.g., “American Chinese” cuisine).
The 329 cuisines are organized across six classification axes, following a faceted taxonomy approach grounded in food anthropology (Laudan 2013, Appadurai 1988) and information science (FoodEx2, RecipeDB). See the interactive cuisine browser for searching and filtering.
Classification Axes
| Axis | Count | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | 287 | Region → country → sub-national hierarchy (e.g., East Asian → Chinese → Sichuan) |
| Diaspora / Fusion | 14 | Cuisines born from migration and cultural blending (e.g., American Chinese, Nikkei, Chifa) |
| Ethnic / Cultural | 12 | Cuisines defined by ethnic identity (e.g., Ashkenazi, Kurdish, Berber, Aboriginal Australian) |
| Religious / Philosophical | 8 | Cuisines shaped by dietary laws (e.g., Kosher, Halal, Buddhist Vegetarian, Jain) |
| Historical / Period | 5 | Cuisines of specific historical eras (e.g., Haute Cuisine, Mughal Court, Medieval European) |
| Social / Class | 3 | Cuisines defined by social context (e.g., Cucina Povera, Shojin-ryori) |
Geographic Hierarchy
🌍 African Cuisine
🌎 Central American & Caribbean Cuisine
- 🇧🇧 Barbadian Cuisine
- 🇧🇿 Belizean Cuisine
- 🇨🇷 Costa Rican Cuisine
- 🇨🇺 Cuban Cuisine
- 🇩🇴 Dominican Cuisine
- 🇬🇹 Guatemalan Cuisine
- 🇬🇾 Guyanese Cuisine
- 🇭🇹 Haitian Cuisine
- 🇭🇳 Honduran Cuisine
- 🇯🇲 Jamaican Cuisine
- 🇳🇮 Nicaraguan Cuisine
- 🇵🇦 Panamanian Cuisine
- 🇵🇷 Puerto Rican Cuisine
- 🇸🇻 Salvadoran Cuisine
- 🇸🇷 Surinamese Cuisine
- 🇹🇹 Trinidadian Cuisine
🌏 East Asian Cuisine
🌍 European Cuisine
🌍 Middle Eastern Cuisine
Diaspora / Fusion
🔀 American Chinese Cuisine🔀 Anglo-Indian Cuisine🔀 Cape Malay Cuisine🔀 Caribbean Creole Cuisine🔀 Chifa Cuisine🔀 Eurasian Cuisine (Singapore)🔀 Indo-Chinese Cuisine🔀 Japanese-Brazilian Cuisine🔀 Korean-American Cuisine🔀 Macanese Cuisine🇲🇺 Mauritanian Cuisine🔀 Nikkei Cuisine🔀 Peranakan Cuisine🔀 Tex-Mex Cuisine