When the science writer and popularizer, Michael Pollan, published his book The omnivore's dilemma (Debate editorial) opened the doors to reflection on our way of eating, what satisfies us and what we dislike; what causes us anxiety and the foods that we reject without being able to give an explanation. This book opened up the melon of the whys: “the fact that we are omnivores,” Pollan wrote, “and can eat all types of foods, makes our act of deciding what we want to eat become a dilemma, especially given the abundance of products that we offers us the disconcerting and treacherous food market.” In short: the more we have, the less we know what we want.
From that book, which was published in Spain in 2017, to the era of artificial intelligence, there are those who think that this dilemma of the omnivore is already a thing of the past thanks to the new trend of food pairing. “We live in a time with too many food options. When what we have chosen or prepared does not meet our expectations, we feel disappointed (…) Developing new recipes or products is quite a challenge (…) Achieving that is precisely the objective of the theory of Foodpairing. “When you know which aroma and taste components make up the flavors of food and drink, it is possible to predict which novel combinations will work,” writes Belgian bioengineer Bernard Lahousse in the book The art and science of foodpairing. 1000 flavor combinations that will transform the way you eat (Editorial Neo-Cook), written by six hands (Peter Coucquyt, Bernard Lahousse and Johan Langenbick).
The book is the example that coexistence is possible between the AI oracle and the tangible of a book. That is, if you ask ChatGPT if he thinks oysters and kiwis are a good combination in a dish, he will answer: “In the specific case of oysters and fruits, the food pairing can be very interesting. Oysters usually have a salty flavor and creamy texture, while fruits can provide a touch of freshness, acidity or sweetness that complements that salty flavor very well. In addition, fruits can also add a contrast of textures and colors, which makes the combination more visually interesting.” If you do the same by opening the book, you will discover a universe of taste possibilities, of tempting chromatic combinations, various olfactory possibilities “to date we have analyzed more than 3,000 different ingredients and we have put together the largest database of aromas and flavors in the world. world,” write its authors. But before the book there was the application and the website where its researchers tempt users to fulfill all their needs: Chocolate with chorizo? Cauliflower with red wine?… One option or the other: two wonders that tempt us to get into the kitchen and experiment!
The first time we heard this term in Spain was in 2017, when Lahousse presented his theory at the Best of Gastronomy congress in San Sebastián. There he left chefs, journalists and scholars speechless with his theory that “if two or more foods share a certain aroma, it is very possible that an association can be built on that common space that gives rise to a more or less unique dish depending on what is known.” or unknown, familiar or apparently discordant that such foods result when converted into ingredients.” The success was such that the best chefs in the world (read: Ferran Adrià, the Roca brothers, Heston Blumenthal) and the most important writers like Harold McGee began to participate in this revolution.
Speaking of Harold McGee. We don't know if it was because of his fascination with food pairing or, simply, because of that analytical spirit that characterizes him, but in 2018 the Debate publishing house put the volume in bookstores Aromas of the World and with it, the invitation to work with the olfactory system to travel to the world of memories or to understand where we are, who we are and what a certain culture is like: “in this book I wanted to compile something different: a guide to the wide world of odors, whether pleasant or not, and the molecular particles transported by the air that stimulate them. Since particles are representative fragments of the entire material cosmos (…) The osmo-cosmos—as the author likes to say—contains an infinite number of molecules, we are always immersed in it. It is a fundamental characteristic of the world we live in and is worth exploring, if only for the sake of imagination and thought.”
The question is: could artificial intelligence also help us stimulate memory through smell?
If the app of food pairing has chefs from half the world hooked, Niki Segnit caught the rest of us who are looking for something more than a great recipe book in gastronomy. Her first book, The encyclopedia of flavors (2011), was a bombshell, discovering and necessary, where the author dared to divulge her research on how to combine 99 different ingredients without dying in the attempt. The result was 980 ideas that began to make us feel a little better in our kitchens. After this, she published Side (2018), a recipe book inspired by that first work. And finally, in 2023 he returns to bookstores with the second part of The encyclopedia of flavors, this time, with more than 90 ingredients—mostly vegetables—and 800 ways to combine them in a dish. All of them, published by Debate, form a trilogy of essentials for those who are beginning to take their first steps in cooking or want to go beyond a simple recipe book. Perhaps, as the author has once said, “the magic of cooking is that one dish always leads to another through unexpected paths that one must be willing to explore to learn to cook with greater freedom.” And this? Artificial intelligence will also give it to us?
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