Proposal: Tracing cultural change through the food we serve

Could we design a project to use a (hypothetical) special collection of menus or cookbooks to find evidence of social change? Did restaurants change their menus after integration? How and when did various ethnic flavors and ingredients enter our experience? Is there a way to trace a culture’s understanding of ingredients and their cultural heritage? What is the relation of fusion cuisine to cultural authenticity? Could it be visualized? What other questions might we ask of such a collection and how would we display the findings on the web?