Written recipes have become too formulaic. Computing can help restore the fun and the fusion of the oral tradition
Over the past few weeks I have been using GPT-4 to help me cook. Need a substitute for an ingredient you forgot to buy? GPT can suggest an alternative. Time to clear out the cupboards? Simply type: “Please create a recipe using two eggs, a jar of borlotti beans, a potato, a leek, and the scrapings on the bottom of a jar of pickle.” I’m always polite, and so is GPT. It thinks for a moment – then whips up the instructions for an unusual but edible hash and even wishes me bon appétit. But that’s not all it can do.
On a recent trip to Venice, I wanted to know what sort of fish I should eat. “One of the local speciality fish is the branzino, or European sea bass,” GPT explained, without mocking my ignorance. And much as image generation models such as Stable Diffusion and Midjourney can imitate popular artists, you can input well-known chefs to influence the results. When I asked for “beans on toast in the style of Yotam Ottolenghi”, for instance, I received a recipe for “spiced beans on sourdough toast” which included cumin, za’atar and greek yoghurt, among about 12 other components. The feeling of reading the long list of ingredients before realising I didn’t have the energy was almost like-for-like.
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