A pinch of this, a dash of that – many chefs will tell you the secret of a delicious meal lies in trusting your instincts and throwing the measuring cup out of the window. The chef above might tell you in somewhat more colourful terms, but the message remains the same.

Well those chefs never met IBM’s Watson supercomputer then, because with this guy precision is definitely king.

Before we plough on let’s make sure we are all on the same page here about how exactly a supercomputer dabbles in cooking. This from Newser:

Watson’s cooking skills resulted from its work with chefs at the Institute of Culinary Education…

The computer gathered information on how to pair foods and how [warning- much American spelling ahead] flavors work together; then it started coming up with recipes of its own…

To pick the best ones, “[they] try to predict what humans will find flavorful, based on some basic ideas from chemistry and psychology.

Last year Watson served up a tasty recipe for a barbecue sauce but has now gone one better and written an entire cookbook, Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson. The book is not yet available but some of the recipes have already raised eyebrows. One in particular, the apple kebab, seemed an odd choice but has held up well. Newser again:

“Strawberries and mushrooms share a lot of flavor compounds,” says a Watson project leader. “It turns out they go quite well together.”

We’ll take your word for it, nameless project leader. It remains to be seen whether the computer can produce the goods under intense time constraints whilst celebrity chefs shout from the sidelines – which as we all know is the only way to really cut your teeth in the culinary world these days.

[sources:newser&newser]