Technology, food and drink are coming together in a new cookbook created by two unlikely partners, IBM and The Institute of Culinary Education (ICE). Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson: Recipes for Innovation from IBM & the Institute of Culinary Education is a result of IBM’s collaboration with its culinary counterpart to pair the knowledge of world-class chefs and beverage experts with the computing power of IBM Watson to generate never-before-seen recipes.
Watson, in case you don’t remember from Jeopardy!, is a cognitive technology that processes information much like a human does, by understanding language, generating evidence-based hypotheses and gathering information as it goes by being taught by users, learning from prior interactions and being presented with new information.
“Chef Watson” may have never tasted a divinely cooked meal or enjoyed a perfectly crafted cocktail, but it understands food pairing theories and hundreds of thousands of relationships between flavor compounds and ingredients. Using this knowledge, it was able to make ingredient suggestions for an array of never-before seen recipes that were created by ICE. Together, Chef Watson, ICE chefs and Anthony Caporale, Director of Beverage Studies at ICE, carefully crafted, evaluated and perfected each of the 65 food and drink recipes in the cookbook for “pleasantness” (superb taste), “surprise” (innovativeness) and a “synergy” of ingredients that will delight any food and drink lover. The cookbook also covers a chronological journey of Chef Watson’s evolution.
The cookbook, which hits shelves April 14, is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.
- Photography: IBM Watson
