5 ms·

I think about this a lot. There's something fundamentally lacking in the way we cook and share cooking, that other arts have already solved. When a musician c

I think about this a lot. There's something fundamentally lacking in the way we cook and share cooking, that other arts have already solved. When a musician creates music, they can record and share it with anyone who cares. Writers print books, actors make movies, coders make apps. With cooking, we're still stuck in the live performance era. In a restaurant you can eat what the chef prepares and enjoy their art. But if you can't get to the restaurant or can't afford it you miss out. Famous chefs release cookbooks and film cooking shows where they let you watch them and you can try to recreate their craft for yourself, but that's not really sharing the food. The problem is there is no food media. An actual dish can't be recorded, transmitted, and reproduced, and so we rely on storytelling about the food using other methods. Food is the subject but not the substance. We've been here before, and we've moved beyond this before. The mass media of writing started with monks transcribing text, but then was improved by the printing press. Writing let us describe music on sheets that you could reproduce by hand at home, but the media of music really started with the wax cylinder, then the phonograph and radio. I think food will become the next major art to become a medium.

jaibot 13y ago
I just bought some hot pockets.
mcguire 13y ago
"The problem is there is no food media. An actual dish can't be recorded, transmitted, and reproduced,..." Sure there is. There are likely plenty of copies of various dishes in the freezer section of your local grocery mart. Some are, objectively, pretty good; others are likely just much better than you could do yourself.
- lsc 13y ago
  >Sure there is. There are likely plenty of copies of various dishes in the freezer section of your local grocery mart. Some are, objectively, pretty good; others are likely just much better than you could do yourself. Huh. See? I am a /terrible/ cook. Like one out of three times I try to cook something it is objectively inedible. However... frozen foods? seriously? Please link me to some that are "pretty good" - I mean, I want to believe you, but I have tried many, and so far have been quite disappointed, both by the cheap and the expensive. Edit: When I say "frozen foods" I mean TV-dinner style fully-cooked food. I practically live off of frozen chicken... the uncooked kind that you throw in the oven.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    I'd rate DiGiorno pizzas fairly high, and also Beecher's Mac & Cheese. The frozen stuff that you stick in the oven for 40 minutes, not the results you get on Google.
    - lsc 13y ago
      Huh. I don't particularly like DiGiorno; I mean, it's not terrible, but considering the nutritive value of a pizza, I'm not sure it's worth it. I mean, a good pizza is worth it. Also, it's like 50% off actually getting delivery pizza (well, not quite 50% if you get a good one.) I'm probably better off throwing some frozen boneless skinless chicken thighs in the oven instead, if I'm not going to get something super tasty. Also, I'm not sure if that counts as 'fully cooked' - I mean, it's not much easier than the aforementioned chicken thighs; also, the part of cooking I screw up most often? spacing out over the alarm and burning it. Really, some sort of convection oven that would automatically shut off (and somehow stop the food from overcooking?) would go a long ways towards solving that problem. The /idea/ of fully-cooked food that you pop into the microwave for a specified period of time is pretty great for me; usually the cook time isn't long enough for me to get distracted and if I do, it's just cold, the fire alarm doesn't go off. But the reality comes up short. the only food I've been able to stomach like that is the "steam bags" of chicken alfredo.
      - saraid216 13y ago
        Eh, DiGiorno started doing this new thing (or at least, a new thing showed up at my local supermarket) a few months back where they seem to layer on the herbs pretty heavily with good results. I would call their standard fare average, especially in comparison. Interestingly, I was a fan of Newman's Own (the aforementioned steam bags) for a while, and then the quality of what I was getting seemed to drop, so I stopped buying them. I haven't done frozen pastas for months now. Jack Daniels sells some stuff that looks nice; the frozen ribs turned out remarkably well for 5 minutes in the microwave. As meat, it's not great, but they've just done the herbs and spices in a way I find appealing. Put some garlic bread or instant mashed potatoes with it and it's pretty good. Really, though, it sounds like we have significant differences in taste, so maybe you should take my suggestions as things to avoid. :D
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Some are, objectively, pretty good There's no such thing as "objectively, pretty good". Its an inherently subjective descriptor.
jckt 13y ago
I disagree. I believe this actually puts food farther away from the common man, more esoteric than it really has to. Food is fundamentally different from the arts you mentioned. Some people may facetiously say that they can't live without visual arts, or music. To say you cannot live without food -- that is a true statement. Programming, painting, writing -- we only started doing these things relatively recently in terms of our full history, and were some near-extinction event to happen in the future (distant, but an absolute certainty), it is possible we may stop doing them in the future. But we will always be eating and drinking. I can tell you that food can indeed be "recorded, transmitted, and reproduced" -- we do it by doing the cooking ourselves, learning from recipes and our imagination. Why should food be so hard? That it's considered an extraordinary feat to cook a wonderful dinner? Why should it be on par with painting a painting or writing a book? I assure you that if you ask any honest cook or chef, they will tell you that cooking isn't difficult. Their job is fucking hard, but the cooking itself? As simple as arts can go. The upper limit of cooking has, admittedly, increased. This is a recent phenomenon. In the future, this may become easier as certain technologies become democratised, and the avant-garde again becomes the status quo. We saw this with Escoffier, Bocuse. We will see it again with Adria. A competent home cook will not miss out on the food of any great restaurant (bar the cutting edge, maybe?) as long as he/she is willing to learn a few tricks (with the restaurant book craze, there are no more secrets) and pay a bit more for groceries (thanks, globalisation). I hope I don't sound too hostile. I didn't downvote you either (hah, don't even have the choice to). I just think that you're looking at food from too academic a viewpoint -- too high up. That's not to say that food cannot reach greater heights. But not in the way you predict or wish it to. Of course, I do hope you visit more great restaurants. Having worked in the back of house of said restaurants, I do want your business! The experience of a restaurant transcends its food, and the unique whole package is of course, not replicable anywhere but in that restaurant. Would there be "restaurant media"? I don't know -- restaurant documentaries don't cut it, maybe the VR headsets we were promised a decade ago would be the solution? Somehow I think that actually going to the restaurant is, in the end, the only way to do it. (Whether or not the concept of restaurant will survive into the far future is another debate)
- mark371 13y ago
  > Food is fundamentally different from the arts you mentioned. Some people may facetiously say that they can't live without visual arts, or music. To say you cannot live without food -- that is a true statement. I fail to see the difference. Nutrition is a solved problem. Just drink soylent. So we are left to talk about the art side of food - taste, smell, feel, touch, look. Artistic composition of ingredients to create a pleasurable meal. > A competent home cook will not miss out on the food of any great restaurant (bar the cutting edge, maybe?) as long as he/she is willing to learn a few tricks (with the restaurant book craze, there are no more secrets) and pay a bit more for groceries (thanks, globalisation). But it's hard to reproduce food from recipe. We need: - better frozen/packaged foods - detailed recipes - food 3d printers?
anigbrowl 13y ago
We're a long way from Star Trek style replicators, not least because food is rather more than just information.
lsc 13y ago
I just noticed your username. Nice. I know people (with embedded software/control systems experience) who are interested in the 'cooking robot' concept. If I ever become rich, it's something I would invest in. See, I think we need a "player piano" - something very rudimentary and limited, but that lets people exchange recipes. Personally? I would prefer to start with heat timing and control, as that's the sort of thing I tend to screw up the most.

jaibot 13y ago

I just bought some hot pockets.

mcguire 13y ago

"The problem is there is no food media. An actual dish can't be recorded, transmitted, and reproduced,..." Sure there is. There are likely plenty of copies of various dishes in the freezer section of your local grocery mart. Some are, objectively, pretty good; others are likely just much better than you could do yourself.

lsc 13y ago
>Sure there is. There are likely plenty of copies of various dishes in the freezer section of your local grocery mart. Some are, objectively, pretty good; others are likely just much better than you could do yourself. Huh. See? I am a /terrible/ cook. Like one out of three times I try to cook something it is objectively inedible. However... frozen foods? seriously? Please link me to some that are "pretty good" - I mean, I want to believe you, but I have tried many, and so far have been quite disappointed, both by the cheap and the expensive. Edit: When I say "frozen foods" I mean TV-dinner style fully-cooked food. I practically live off of frozen chicken... the uncooked kind that you throw in the oven.
- saraid216 13y ago
  I'd rate DiGiorno pizzas fairly high, and also Beecher's Mac & Cheese. The frozen stuff that you stick in the oven for 40 minutes, not the results you get on Google.
  - lsc 13y ago
    Huh. I don't particularly like DiGiorno; I mean, it's not terrible, but considering the nutritive value of a pizza, I'm not sure it's worth it. I mean, a good pizza is worth it. Also, it's like 50% off actually getting delivery pizza (well, not quite 50% if you get a good one.) I'm probably better off throwing some frozen boneless skinless chicken thighs in the oven instead, if I'm not going to get something super tasty. Also, I'm not sure if that counts as 'fully cooked' - I mean, it's not much easier than the aforementioned chicken thighs; also, the part of cooking I screw up most often? spacing out over the alarm and burning it. Really, some sort of convection oven that would automatically shut off (and somehow stop the food from overcooking?) would go a long ways towards solving that problem. The /idea/ of fully-cooked food that you pop into the microwave for a specified period of time is pretty great for me; usually the cook time isn't long enough for me to get distracted and if I do, it's just cold, the fire alarm doesn't go off. But the reality comes up short. the only food I've been able to stomach like that is the "steam bags" of chicken alfredo.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      Eh, DiGiorno started doing this new thing (or at least, a new thing showed up at my local supermarket) a few months back where they seem to layer on the herbs pretty heavily with good results. I would call their standard fare average, especially in comparison. Interestingly, I was a fan of Newman's Own (the aforementioned steam bags) for a while, and then the quality of what I was getting seemed to drop, so I stopped buying them. I haven't done frozen pastas for months now. Jack Daniels sells some stuff that looks nice; the frozen ribs turned out remarkably well for 5 minutes in the microwave. As meat, it's not great, but they've just done the herbs and spices in a way I find appealing. Put some garlic bread or instant mashed potatoes with it and it's pretty good. Really, though, it sounds like we have significant differences in taste, so maybe you should take my suggestions as things to avoid. :D
dragonwriter 13y ago
> Some are, objectively, pretty good There's no such thing as "objectively, pretty good". Its an inherently subjective descriptor.

jckt 13y ago

I disagree. I believe this actually puts food farther away from the common man, more esoteric than it really has to. Food is fundamentally different from the arts you mentioned. Some people may facetiously say that they can't live without visual arts, or music. To say you cannot live without food -- that is a true statement. Programming, painting, writing -- we only started doing these things relatively recently in terms of our full history, and were some near-extinction event to happen in the future (distant, but an absolute certainty), it is possible we may stop doing them in the future. But we will always be eating and drinking. I can tell you that food can indeed be "recorded, transmitted, and reproduced" -- we do it by doing the cooking ourselves, learning from recipes and our imagination. Why should food be so hard? That it's considered an extraordinary feat to cook a wonderful dinner? Why should it be on par with painting a painting or writing a book? I assure you that if you ask any honest cook or chef, they will tell you that cooking isn't difficult. Their job is fucking hard, but the cooking itself? As simple as arts can go. The upper limit of cooking has, admittedly, increased. This is a recent phenomenon. In the future, this may become easier as certain technologies become democratised, and the avant-garde again becomes the status quo. We saw this with Escoffier, Bocuse. We will see it again with Adria. A competent home cook will not miss out on the food of any great restaurant (bar the cutting edge, maybe?) as long as he/she is willing to learn a few tricks (with the restaurant book craze, there are no more secrets) and pay a bit more for groceries (thanks, globalisation). I hope I don't sound too hostile. I didn't downvote you either (hah, don't even have the choice to). I just think that you're looking at food from too academic a viewpoint -- too high up. That's not to say that food cannot reach greater heights. But not in the way you predict or wish it to. Of course, I do hope you visit more great restaurants. Having worked in the back of house of said restaurants, I do want your business! The experience of a restaurant transcends its food, and the unique whole package is of course, not replicable anywhere but in that restaurant. Would there be "restaurant media"? I don't know -- restaurant documentaries don't cut it, maybe the VR headsets we were promised a decade ago would be the solution? Somehow I think that actually going to the restaurant is, in the end, the only way to do it. (Whether or not the concept of restaurant will survive into the far future is another debate)

mark371 13y ago
> Food is fundamentally different from the arts you mentioned. Some people may facetiously say that they can't live without visual arts, or music. To say you cannot live without food -- that is a true statement. I fail to see the difference. Nutrition is a solved problem. Just drink soylent. So we are left to talk about the art side of food - taste, smell, feel, touch, look. Artistic composition of ingredients to create a pleasurable meal. > A competent home cook will not miss out on the food of any great restaurant (bar the cutting edge, maybe?) as long as he/she is willing to learn a few tricks (with the restaurant book craze, there are no more secrets) and pay a bit more for groceries (thanks, globalisation). But it's hard to reproduce food from recipe. We need: - better frozen/packaged foods - detailed recipes - food 3d printers?

anigbrowl 13y ago

We're a long way from Star Trek style replicators, not least because food is rather more than just information.

lsc 13y ago

I just noticed your username. Nice. I know people (with embedded software/control systems experience) who are interested in the 'cooking robot' concept. If I ever become rich, it's something I would invest in. See, I think we need a "player piano" - something very rudimentary and limited, but that lets people exchange recipes. Personally? I would prefer to start with heat timing and control, as that's the sort of thing I tend to screw up the most.