The Dawn of Post-Modernist Cuisine?

[IndyRob]

Well, leave it to the folks at MIT to make food even more geeky. Here they present several new robotic prototypes that could point to a world where things such as Sous Vide and Spherification might be viewed as positively rustic.

I doubt we'll all be able to afford Digital Chocolatiers or 3D Food Printers. But, perhaps instead of investing in the Viking range, Polyscience circulator, and/or Blodgett combi oven - as well as our stocks of ingredients - we'll just invest in a pneumatic tube (with the optional beverage delivery tubes) connected to the neighborhood Food Fab Manufactory.

We'll do our 'cooking' online and replace the exchanging of recipes with the sharing of programs. The software involved would have to identify dangerous practices or combinations to prevent viral epidemics.

Sure, the act of cooking may become less soulful, but c'mon, how are we going to compete with our high-tech robotic minions with their infrared eyes, marinade injecting Thermapen fingers, and sub-millimeter precision? Hell, they're even impervious to the worst imaginable Gordon Ramsay tirade (and if they did take offense, they'd probably just inject some boiling marinade into his skull).

If we miss the smells of cooking we can order up some pork roast smells to be delivered through the pneuma-tube when it's not actually delivering product. Our video walls could display idyllic scenes of sauteeing onions or simmering stocks.

Of course, there will sure to be a counter cultural backlash creating the next phase of culinary evolution - one likely to be embraced by Anthony Bourdain, for one....

Punk Food.

[mkayahara]

Our video walls could display idyllic scenes of sauteeing onions or simmering stocks.

Wait, isn't that what the Food Network does already?

[Chris Amirault]

The death of so-called traditional cooking has been exaggerated -- and it depends on a simplistic notion of what people across the world do in their kitchens to feed their family. A quick glimpse through books like Hungry Planet make it clear that Big Pronouncements about How We Cook miss the boat. Lots of people toss bags into microwaves and only smell the food when they lift it to their mouth while driving; others subsist on food that lacks aroma utterly.

As for soulful cooking: well, those around here get a whole lot more from afternoon-long braises and freshly baked bread than subsistence, so I'm not too worried about it disappearing too soon, Sous Vide Supreme or no.

[Dakki]

I'm with Chris on this. There's very little practical difference between that neighborhood food fab as described in the OP and calling the pizza place to have something delivered... and here we are, investing time and money to make our own pizza.

This may be completely in my head, but I don't think this is the way (home) cookery is trending. Instead, I see people adopting an artisan ethic for their food, rejecting packaged goods in favor of raw ingredients that require more time and effort. This is based entirely on my observation of friends and family so feel free to disagree.

I don't doubt all kinds of innovative new gadgets to make food preparation faster/easier/safer will be introduced. Doubtlessly some of them be eagerly adopted by the general population, some will be restricted to commercial kitchens and the hard core of kitchen gadgetry enthusiasts and some will die out after a more or less promising start. In other words, I think the immediate future will look a lot like the immediate past.

I do love the idea of Punk Food and look forward to it, though.

[Shalmanese]

We're going to see completely automated restaurants before we see fantastical tubes connected to our homes. Given that food preparation seems to stubbornly refuse automation and that it's one of the largest employers of low wage workers (fruit picking, butchery, food manufacturing, fast food kitchens etc.), food is going to be one of the last places where machines take over.

[IndyRob]

We're going to see completely automated restaurants before we see fantastical tubes connected to our homes.

I'm with you here. I've been thinking about this for a while.

But the automation is out there in the industrial food world. It's just that our (consumer's) standards are not high enough. After all, we're just discovering things like sous vide that the industry has been using for decades. It's just that industry is more concerned with the marketplace than the individual dish.

It used to be that computers filled the basements of huge companies and did taxes and censuses. Now, with personal computers, they're playing music, and movies, and LOL cats - along with encyclopedias, sous vide charts and instructional videos.

I understand the artisanal aspect. I myself have knowingly overcooked things because I was just a little too damned contented with my music, glass of wine, and simmering pot. But as we all know, it isn't always so idyllic.

But it's not just about that. The possibilities with 3D food printers are nearly endless. With these and other tools we create dishes that are today unfathomable. But we could also see more efficient means of using fresh product. The half tomato I don't need for my BLT could be immediately redirected to someone else's caprese salad. Less waste, less garbage - more, and better food.

[Dakki]

I don't think the computer analogy holds up very well. Computers (digital ones, anyway) are very general number-crunching devices, where any computer can, in principle, do any calculation (if someone bothers to write the software for it, anyway) while machinery of the kind required for food preparation is highly specific (and the more automated, the more specific).

Machine tools (which I know a little bit more about, hehe) are a better analogy, I think. Generally, manual machines are much slower than CNC but far more flexible, and the most flexible (but slowest) are hand tools. The least flexible of all are purpose-built lines or stations that do several unrelated processes; if you make even small changes in the processes you end up having to tear down the line and rebuilding it.

So highly-automated tools make sense if you're doing a process (machining a part, slicing bologna, whatever) over and over, while manual machine tools (and to an even greater extent, hand tools) make much more sense if you're doing one-shots or small runs, like using a knife instead of a slicer if you just need enough cheese for one sandwich. Lines or stations that do a lot of different things (assembling a car, building a sandwich) only make sense if you're making huge numbers of identical or nearly-identical assemblies.

So... I'm thinking about breadmaking machines. They do several things to the ingredients (mix, knead, proof, bake) and save a lot of time if you make bread often but they aren't very useful for anything else. At the other extreme, you use knives and frying pans pretty much for anything. Somewhere in the middle are gadgets that do one thing, or a small number of similar things, like blenders and food processors.

Anyway, I think commercial kitchens that serve vast amounts of identical or nearly-identical foods (like fast-food establishments) would be the first to automate (and to a certain extent they are, in the sense that much of the prep is done by machines in factories and the prepped ingredients delivered to the restaurant), but it's still cheaper to pay some poor chump minimum wage to man the deep fryer instead of building a machine to do it. So I don't see fully-automated consumer kitchens in the short or medium term. New gadgets, sure.

[IndyRob]

Machine tools (which I know a little bit more about, hehe) are a better analogy, I think. Generally, manual machines are much slower than CNC but far more flexible, and the most flexible (but slowest) are hand tools. The least flexible of all are purpose-built lines or stations that do several unrelated processes; if you make even small changes in the processes you end up having to tear down the line and rebuilding it.

Factories tend to use the simplest machine possible for an application. But there are more flexible 'bots that adapt to the task coming down the assembly line. Or 5-axis milling machines that can go from job to job with minimal adjustment. But I agree that some of the prototypes in the article are a little too much like bread machines.

That's what led me to think about the Food Fab Mart. It could have dedicated slicing tables that could do all sorts of slicing and dicing, but leaves other tasks to other machines.

But again, the ideas - especially the 3D food printer - go beyond mere automation, into completely new kinds of techniques and food.

[Dakki]

I can make stuff on my fully-manual DeVliegs my competition with their Haas 5-axis CNC machines can only dream of, despite their theoretical limitations - all it requires is a skilled and experienced operator, which is what automation takes out of the picture. It's not an absolute law of nature but a pretty good rule of thumb - the more automated a system is, the less flexibility it offers. See Neal Stephenson's essay "In the Beginning was the Command Line" for a good explanation of how this rule applies to software.

One of my current projects involves rehabilitating an ancient flat wire rolling mill. The client owns a very nice, very new, fully automated machine that can put out huge volumes of work with no operator sensitivity - as long as the work is in standard gauges. They just happen to see an opportunity in doing low-volume, high-added-value work in nonstandard gauges - something that can only be done on a fully manual device by a skilled operator.

Anyway, those 3D printers and etc. are nice, and like I said in my first post, I think they (and other such devices) might eventually take off in commercial kitchens and with the more gadgety enthusiasts. I just don't think it's going to change how the vast majority of people deal with food.

[mkayahara]

Anyway, those 3D printers and etc. are nice, and like I said in my first post, I think they (and other such devices) might eventually take off in commercial kitchens and with the more gadgety enthusiasts. I just don't think it's going to change how the vast majority of people deal with food.

But this in turn raises an interesting question: In the future, are we going to see a wider and wider gap between how commercial kitchens deal with food and how the "vast majority of people" do? I think we've already witnessed it to some extent with modernist cuisine, which uses equipment and chemicals that are out of financial reach for the majority of home cooks. (And I say this as a home cook who sprung for a PolyScience Sous Vide Professional.) Is it just going to get worse?

[Dakki]

Hasn't it been that way, even before the introduction of modernist cuisine?

I'm thinking of salamanders, BTU outputs on stoves and so on. And then there's specialist equipment, like French bakery ovens, wood fuel pizza ovens and those crazy high heat burners necessary for wok hei.

[Chris Amirault]

It's a good point. Folks who find SV cooking off-putting don't seem to hold the same grudge against Fryalators.

[mkayahara]

Hasn't it been that way, even before the introduction of modernist cuisine?

I'm thinking of salamanders, BTU outputs on stoves and so on. And then there's specialist equipment, like French bakery ovens, wood fuel pizza ovens and those crazy high heat burners necessary for wok hei.

Sure, there's always been a gap, but I'm wondering whether gap is widening. I can't produce the same output at home as a commercial wok burner, but I can still stir-fry; I don't have a wood-fueled pizza oven, but I can still make pizza. What I think we've started to see is differences not just in degree, but in kind. There's no way (that I know of) to reproduce the effects of freeze-drying without laying out the cash for a freeze-drier.

I'm willing to admit, though, that freeze-driers may become smaller and cheaper over time, until they are affordable to the average home user. Though, personally, I'd rather see chamber vacuum machines hit that point first.

[IndyRob]

But this in turn raises an interesting question: In the future, are we going to see a wider and wider gap between how commercial kitchens deal with food and how the "vast majority of people" do? I think we've already witnessed it to some extent with modernist cuisine, which uses equipment and chemicals that are out of financial reach for the majority of home cooks. (And I say this as a home cook who sprung for a PolyScience Sous Vide Professional.) Is it just going to get worse?

I think there would be a progression. Wiley Dufresne or someone might perfect a method of printing the perfect, repeatable, marbled steak. He might have to charge a ton for them. But with that advancement, a market would be created. Then specialty butcher shops could get into the act. Eventually, a supermarket chain could offer comparable products.

[Dakki]

You're right, I get your point. There's a lot of stuff that can't be realistically done without some specialized gear in the modernist repertoire. So yeah, maybe the gap is opening... how's that going to affect us? I'm going to have to think a bit more about the relationship between commercial and home cooking before I give an opinion.

[mkayahara]

I should add that I do feel that this gap is already plenty in evidence in the difference between the food processing industry and home cooking, and that restaurant cooking is drawing on the processing industry's toolbox... but I don't necessarily think it follows that restaurant kitchens are moving closer to the processing industry than to home cooking.