Food data spans everything from molecules to fields to warehouses.

In real life (how to be a better cook) I am a big fan of the the book “Ratio” by Michael Ruhlman. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Ratio/Michael-Ruhlman/Ruhlmans-Ratios/ For any home cook, or restaurant chef, this is a way to start thinking about cooking free of recipes. Or more powerfully being able to conjure “recipes” on the spot that are likely to work and can be customized to your desired use and flavor preferences. Ruhlman suggests that using a scale and learning ratios is one surefire way to approach this, and I agree. Beyond formal measurement this becomes intuitively ingrained in certain cooks so that they just know “How much is the right amount of flour” to make a perfect cake with four eggs. Maybe Grandma was an expert at that. This book teaches you to become a walking formulation space calculator. No computer needed (gram scale useful). As related to recipes (what do we call this?) When…

There are at least seven contexts of foodservice data that are useful that lie between the supply chain and the end customer. The transmogrificaiton of data during this journey presents unique challenges. Considering these layers will yield more useful data models. Understanding what behaviors drive higher value customers is key to maximizing that value.

Sometimes two passions collide. Sometimes interesting works result. Nomnommer and the work we did on “Systems and Methods for Virtual Cooking” (Pandora for recipes) was very forward thinking for the time based on the available technologies. Graph was young (Neo4j was in version 1.x), ML and NLP tools were only starting to evolve. More recently Dr. Ganesh Bagler and his lab at IIIT-Delhi are at the forefront with their research into many important aspects of Computational Gastronomy. His lab’s contribution to this domain cannot be understated. As recipes by their very nature are natural language, the advent of LLMs and other “modern” technologies present new opportunities in this domain. Computational Gastronomy article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41540-024-00399-5 Systems and Methods for Virtual Cooking: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/92/93/de/9b571f20dbdc8c/US20130149675A1.pdf

By their very nature, a chef must be a sophisticated computational machine. A walking multi-sensory knowledge graph able to make semantic connections and weigh complex business and artistic decisions in real time. It is impossible to get a shorter supply chain than farmer to chef. In a previous life I was a fine dining chef. I enjoyed short supply chains. Photos of farm fresh results here: https://www.goodeyephotography.com/search#q=sent+sovi