Megabytes: supercomputer writes first cookbook

Touting such eyebrow-raising combinations as an Indian turmeric paella, a Turkish-Korean anchovy Caesar salad and a Creole shrimp-lamb dumpling, a new contender for hottest cookery writer of 2015 is preparing to elbow aside the likes of Jamie Oliver, Mary Berry and Nigella Lawson: IBM’s supercomputer Watson.

Four years after beating two human champions to win the US game show Jeopardy! IBM’s cognitive computing system is set to release its first cookbook - with the help of a few human specialists. Out in April from independent American publisher Sourcebooks, Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson uses the supercomputer to generate exotic ingredient combinations from the “trillions” of potential groupings out there, with chefs from the Institute of Culinary Education then designing recipes based on Watson’s suggestions. The book will feature, promises its publisher, “unusual ingredient combinations that man alone might never imagine”.

“I think it’s fascinatingly different, that’s really one of the big reasons we chose to publish,” said Todd Stocke, editorial director at Sourcebooks. “Take a craft – an artform, really – like cooking, apply hardcore science. It makes for genuinely unique results with surprising and smart reasons behind them.”

IBM’s experts began by “training” Watson - which is named after IBM founder Thomas Watson - on tens of thousands of recipes, and on the chemical composition of foods, moving on to the flavours and ingredients which complement each other - such as rosemary and potatoes, or olives and gin. The computer then used three different metrics to analyse ingredients, rating them for surprise (suggesting ingredients which are rarely found together), pleasantness (“researchers have carried out studies on the flavours that give people pleasure at a molecular level,” says the book), and synergy (“studies indicate that foods sharing common chemical flavour compounds taste good together”).

“The system essentially worked as follows: the cook enters some basic elements that serve as a foundation for a dish, which Watson then processes using an extensive database of recipes, cultural studies, and chemical flavour composition, all of which results in an ‘output’ of ingredient lists that Watson finds interesting on scales of pleasantness, surprise, and flavour pairing,” said Michael Laiskonis, Institute of Culinary Education creative director.

“The cook then selected one of these lists of ingredients with which to create a dish. The system relies on human prompts and interaction, which has lent an interesting personal aspect to each of the dishes.”