In recent years, IBM has been adapting the technology of its cognitive computing system Watson to many different activities. Lately, it’s also launching Chef Watson, a version of this intelligence artificial that specializes in inventing new recipes. The idea is to get it to recognize people’s tastes to provide customized recipes.

Cognitive computing aims to reproduce human thought. In the case of recipes, the process is called “cognitive cooking”. For the training necessary to make it learn this art, Chef Watson analyzed thousands of recipes including the database of 9,000 recipes of the magazine “Bon Appétit” and studied the Wikipedia files to learn associations among different ingredients and different cuisines.

For Chef Watson it’s not just about storing the recipes but also understanding them. This means that it must interpret the correct way to prepare the ingredients to understand how to combine them in the best way. For this reason, it also analyzed a research on how people respond sniffing certain ingredients.

The result is the ability to create new recipes based on the ingredients available. Thanks to its ability to analyze huge amounts of data in a very short time, Chef Watson can create new recipes. In certain cases, the ingredients may seem incompatible but the system of cognitive cooking manages to combine them all the same.

IBM intends to open to the public the use of Chef Watson. A website in collaboration with “Bon Appétit” is already online and for the moment is in beta testing. The access is by invitation but you can request it. The project also includes the creation of a mobile app to make Chef Watson available everywhere.

IBM also worked with the Institute of Culinary Education and the result is a recipe book entitled “Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson: Recipes for Innovation from IBM & the Institute of Culinary Education” available from the middle of April 2015. It contains 65 original recipes chosone for their flavor but also for their originality.

IBM is training its system Watson for really important tasks such as medical research but cognitive cooking can be very helpful as well. In a future that could be very close, if you want to eat something different or you don’t know how to put together what you have in your fridge, you’ll be avle to seek help from Chef Watson.

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