IBM's Supercomputer Chef Releases a Cookbook

IBM's Watson supercomputer has been dabbling in the world of cooking for a while now; last year, for instance, it offered up its own barbecue sauce, which was reportedly a hit. Soon, you'll be able to try some of Chef Watson's recipes in your own kitchen. The computer is launching its own cookbook, Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson, IBM reports in a press release. The book, due out tomorrow, comes after the computer helped run a food truck at last year's South by Southwest festival and later launched a cooking app with Bon Appétit. Watson's cooking skills resulted from its work with chefs at the Institute of Culinary Education, IBM notes.

The computer gathered information on how to pair foods and how flavors work together; then it started coming up with recipes of its own, which ICE chefs tested. "Given the numerous different combinations of possible ingredients in the world, it’s impossible for a single person to imagine and reason about them all," IBM notes. But chefs have tweaked Watson's recipes to their own liking. You can sample some of them, including a Russian celery sandwich and Asian butternut squash soup, here. Others sound particularly unusual: Quartz notes, for instance, the computer's apple kebab. "Strawberries and mushrooms share a lot of flavor compounds," says a Watson project leader. "It turns out they go quite well together." (More IBM stories.)