Source methodology
Every recipe surveys cultural-authority, press, community, and individual sources — then weighs them.
Each ChefEdit recipe surveys 50-100 unique-domain sources, classified into four tiers by authority signal.
Tier 1 — Cultural authority
Government, academic, embassy, UNESCO, and institutional culinary schools. Weighted highest because they carry the strongest claim to "what the dish is."
Tier 2 — Established press
Editorial food media with a byline-and-editor masthead: Serious Eats, Bon Appétit, Saveur, BBC Good Food, Bangkok Post, Nation Thailand, Thai PBS. Strong fact-checking, but more freedom for "spin."
Tier 3 — Community + curation
Forums, recipe-sharing platforms, and Wikipedia: Pantip, Wongnai, Cookpad, Kapook, OpenRice. High-volume signal of what home cooks actually do.
Tier 4 — Individual voices
Personal blogs, food bloggers, family recipe sites. Lowest weight but useful for cross-checking technique consensus.
Why not just Tier 1?
A recipe written entirely from cultural-authority sources is often a museum piece — accurate to a formal tradition but disconnected from how the dish is cooked at home today. Cross-referencing community and individual sources surfaces the variations and short-cuts that real cooks use, and which substitutions actually work.
Why every recipe cites its provenance
If you ever wonder why a recipe says do this rather than do that, the provenance panel tells you what the model read. You can disagree with us, and we won't have hidden the evidence.