novel - Incorporating research and background: How much is too much?

The amount of research I'm doing for my novel is staggering. To the point where my spouse says I need to write a companion book (or a blog) just talking about the research! Sometimes I research for hours simply to include one line.

I live in terror of having my characters eat a food that didn't exist in that time and place! Okay, not really. But that is in fact the level of accuracy I'm going for.

Food is one example. I describe in detail the first meal my time travelers have when they arrive in ancient Egypt. The second meal I wrote more sparsely and my critique group jumped on me. They wanted more! This makes sense because the Exodus (yes, the Exodus) is starting in a few days and the contrast between the rich assortment of food they ate in Egypt vs the manna and quail they have in the desert is an important part of the story. Though my group wasn't thinking of that, they just liked my food descriptions.

I'm also researching clothing, housing, furniture, songs, linguistics, hair styles, ethnic groups, landscape, plants, makeup, musical instruments, dance styles, footwear, brickmaking, agricultural practices, domesticated animals, wild animals, weather, metalworking, joinery, midwifery, medicine, and so much Torah I say it's like having 20 bat mitzvahs (only that's a huge underestimate).

In addition to using beta readers (and some basic common sense), how do you balance the amount of research you're doing with how much ends up in the work? Some times it's easy, because the research makes subtle changes you incorporate, other times it's harder to figure out.

Answer

I think you're conceptualizing this wrongly. The research doesn't end up in your work, it informs your work.

The amount of research you do ends up affecting the fabric of your book, how real it feels, how multilayered the world is, how unexpected the details, and connections. But NO piece of research should ever be included in your book just because you know it. Your research is there so you have something to draw on whenever you need it. To put it another way, you aren't doing research to put it in your book, you're doing it to pull your book out of it.

As far as how much research you need, it needs to be enough that your world feels compelling and real, but not so much that it's stopping you from writing. If it isn't interfering with your writing, no amount of research is "too much." If it inspires you to write richly detailed prose, that's all to the good. But if you're shoehorning it into the book, not because it belongs, but just to show off your knowledge, then it's "too much." And if you're spending all your time researching, and you never actually write the book, that's "too much" too.