Abstract
We present AΜAΛΘΕΙA (AMALTHIA), an application ontology that models the domain of dishes as they are presented in 112 menus collected from restaurants/taverns/patisseries in East Macedonia and Thrace in Northern Greece. AΜAΛΘΕΙA supports a tourist mobile application offering multilingual translation of menus, dietary and cultural information about the dishes and their ingredients, as well as information about the geographical dispersion of the dishes. In this document, we focus on the food/dish dimension that constitutes the ontology’s backbone. Its dish-oriented perspective differentiates AΜAΛΘΕΙA from other food ontologies and thesauri, such as Langual, enabling it to codify information about the dishes served, particularly considering the fact that they are subject to wide variation due to the inevitable evolution of recipes over time, to geographical and cultural dispersion, and to the chef’s creativity. We argue for the adopted design decisions by drawing on semantic information retrieved from the menus, as well as other social and commercial facts, and compare AMAΛΘΕΙA with other important taxonomies in the food field. To the best of our knowledge, AΜAΛΘΕΙA is the first ontology modeling (i) dish variation and (ii) Greek (commercial) cuisine (a component of the Mediterranean diet).
Highlights
We place special emphasis on the treatment of the phenomenon of dish variation, we model the arrangement of ingredients in dishes, we evaluate our approach, and we conclude with future plans considering the development of the ontology
Since the main ingredient (MI) has a prominent role in AMAΛΘEIA, we offer some further motivation for its definition:
In order to represent the fact that is listed on restaurant menus either as a minced meat dish or as a pasta one, we introduce spaghetti Bolognese is listed on restaurant menus either as a minced meat dish or as a multiple inheritance with the relation R:Eπιπλέoν ευρύτερη έννoια “Additional broader pasta one, we introduce multiple inheritance with the relation R:Επιπλέον ευρύτερη concept” (R:ABC) that receives more than one value
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. It is the menu aspect that makes AMAΛΘEIA special
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