Colloquium Computing Science

Title: Culinary Informatics

Speaker: Peter Riegler,
Department of Computer Science,
Wolfenbüttel University of Applied Sciences

Abstract:
Cooking and informatics show many parallels. For instance, recipes regularily serve as a standard example for algorithms. However, recipes can also be investigated from an information theoretic point of view, focusing on questions like:

• Are there differences between cuisines of different countries? (There

certainly are. But can they be measured?)

• Are there differences between a given cuisine at different times?

• Are there statistical similarities between different collections of recipes?
To arrive at the answers of such questions requires labor-intensive processing of collections of recipes. Informatics (via its offspring information technology) can be helpful here as well to automate the required information processing. The talk gives first results on a comparision of Brazilian, Englisch, French and German cuisine and describes how they are obtained with a high degreeof automation.