The Institute of Culinary Education has teamed up with IBM to create a cookbook with recipes from Watson, the tech company's cognitive computing system. The new book, Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson, will be published by Sourcebooks in April.
Culinary experts at ICE developed 65 original recipes inspired by unconventional ingredient concepts generated by "Chef Watson." The book is also peppered with cooking tips from the pros at ICE, anecdotes on the various stages of IBM and ICE’s collaboration, and other ideas for home cooks. Recipes include Spanish Almond Crescent, to Creole Shrimp-Lamb Dumplings, Vietnamese Apple Kebab, and Hoof-and-Honey Ale.
“For chefs, creativity is one of the most important elements for success," said Brian Aronowitz, chief marketing officer at the Institute of Culinary Education. "Human chefs can reason with a finite set of ingredients, or those that they have been exposed to. Using this technology, their creativity is enhanced by quintillions of possible ingredient pairings, augmenting their creativity."
IBM's technology made headlines in 2011 when Watson challenged formidable (human) contestants on Jeopardy, and won. According to IBM, in the years since Watson prevailed on the quiz show, the computer is 24 times faster, smarter with a 2,400% improvement in performance, and 90% smaller – once the size of a master bedroom, it is now equivalent to the size of three stacked pizza boxes.
“One of the concepts we wanted to demonstrate with Chef Watson is this notion of discovery and computational creativity,” said Florian Pinel, senior technical staff member, IBM Watson Group. “To discover something new, be it a medical insight or recipe, requires insight into a large body of information and being able to use that insight to make connections and draw conclusions. Whether you’re working in the kitchen or the laboratory, Watson’s ability to reason and learn can help humans arrive at new discoveries.”
