Dawn Perry was worried. It was a pretty typical day in the Bon Appétit test kitchen, and the senior food editor had a pretty typical task in front of her: Create five new recipes for a Fourth of July menu. Ribs, a classic slaw, both corn and potato salads, and a berry dessert were all on the docket. Perry had developed similar recipes dozens of times before, if not hundreds. It should have been simple. Easy. Straightforward. But something weighed on her mind as she checked off the items on the ingredient list for her slaw: cabbage, scallion, garlic, mayonnaise…flour? Was this a joke? What the hell was flour doing in a slaw recipe? Couldn't she just nix it altogether?
Unfortunately for Perry, her co-cook wasn't budging. If that cook had been any of her Bon Appétit colleagues—assistant food editor Claire Saffitz, test kitchen manager Brad Leone, or senior associate food editor Alison Roman—she could have swayed them. But Perry wasn't working with a Bon Appétit colleague. She was working with Chef Watson. **
And Chef Watson is—as you may have guessed from that headline up there—a computer.
Or, really, a new kind of computing system. Developed by IBM, Chef Watson is a complex piece of software that essentially discovers and invents dishes, using what it's learned from Bon Appétit's 9,000-odd recipes, plus its own understanding of which chemical flavor compounds go together (and which don't). Through a Web app, Chef Watson had asked Perry for some basic inputs—a specific ingredient to use, a type of dish to create, a theme—and returned her a dizzying array of ingredient lists for her Fourth of July menu, ranking the lists according to how "surprising" they were. (Click here for an in-depth look at how Chef Watson works.) This iteration of the software, however, did not include preparation instructions (the current one does), leaving Perry to puzzle out just how to include flour in a coleslaw.
But that sort of puzzle was precisely the point, because Chef Watson—whose presence in the test kitchen marked the beginning of an ongoing partnership between Bon Appétit and IBM—is not supposed to be a total kitchen solution, but rather a spur to creativity. Which is not to say our test kitchen isn't creative (hello, pickled nectarine salad with burrata!), but Chef Watson's contribution is unique: It sees the connections you sense but can't quite articulate, puts them in front of you, and lets you take control from there.
"We're not going to teach people how to sauté potatoes," explained Florian Pinel, the project's senior software engineer and, as it happens, a graduate of the Institute for Culinary Education in New York, "but we are going to give you ideas for different flavors to add into those potatoes."
Which brings us back to Perry, her slaw, and the flour. She racked her brain. Slaws are, by definition, fresh, crunchy, and a perfect combination of virtuousness and fun. Wait—was there something there? Crunchy. Without some satisfying crispiness, it just wouldn't be a slaw. She smiled, then grabbed a few onions. She knew exactly what she was going to do.
See, in addition to that flour, white onions—which also appeared on Chef Watson's ingredient list—were a bit of an annoyance, too aggressive to add raw into the slaw. So Perry got creative. She sliced the onion into rings, soaked them in mayonnaise and buttermilk (both on Chef Watson's list), then dredged them with—you guessed it—flour. Finally, she fried them in vegetable oil. Two birds, one stone: crispy fried onions, which she scattered generously, along with chopped peanuts, over a napa-cabbage slaw dressed with fish sauce, rice vinegar, tamarind, honey, olive oil, garlic, scallion, basil, and mint (whew!).
Like all ingredient risks, however, it had to work both on paper and on the palate. Perry presented the finished dish—along with three others—to Pinel and a team of IBM and Bon Appétit staffers and waited for the verdict. She didn't have to hold her breath long—everyone loved the onions. They were fried to a shattering crispness, plenty salty, and gave a little oomph to a dish that had the potential to stay in safe, seen-it-before territory.
"Using fried onions almost feels like cheating because fried onions are good on anything," Perry said, "but it did make for a fun riff."
And that was just the slaw; each dish came with its own set of challenges. Short ribs boasted no less than 17 different ingredients—like fennel, smoked paprika, allspice, oyster sauce, and Chinese hot mustard, which turned into a spice-heavy dry rub, then a sauce to be slathered over the ribs as they finished on the grill. A corn salad seemed harmless enough with chile powder, coriander, basil, cumin, and mint, but the inclusion of nectarines made for some interesting bites. A berry cobbler—with lemon zest, sour cream, buttermilk, sugar, honey, strawberry jam, and, oddly enough, marjoram—wrapped things up for dessert.
Everyone shared their opinions on the menu, while Perry considered the ease of each recipe, ingredient list-length, and, of course, the flavor and texture. The corn salad was tasty—but did the nectarines really make it any better? Did the berry cobbler's marjoram work with the sweet flavors of honey and sugar? The ribs were fall-off-the-bone tender, with a nice char, but Perry was completely overwhelmed by the number of ingredients—she figured BA readers would be, too—and suggested Chef Watson be reined in. So Perry went back into the kitchen for some tweaking, retooling, and retesting—a process that happens for every Bon Appétit recipe, no matter where they originate.
Once the finished products were tested, edited, and photographed, (and Perry had a moment to wipe the crumbs from her keyboard), it was time for some reflection. What was it like to cook with with Watson?
"It was a good workout," she said. "Think of a long-distance runner who goes in for a cardio workout. You're not used to it—but it's good for you." Perry explained that developing a recipe with Chef Watson feels remarkably like being a contestant on Jeopardy! (where another version of Watson famously appeared—and won—in 2011). "You're given the answer—the ingredient list—before you really know what questions to ask." Cooking like that can feel challenging, or even frightening at first, but after an initial test drive, it can be inspiring, enjoyable, even liberating.
Working with Watson, Perry said, forces you to consider ingredients you never would on your own: "Like the Chinese spicy mustard on the ribs. When was the last time I thought about that? Or the marjoram in the berry cobbler." That berry cobbler ended up being one of the favorites of the batch, and Perry's still thinking of ways to make it better. "I could sprinkle a marjoram sugar over everything before I bake it," she mused after tasting the initial batch, which was cooked with a handful of the herb nestled in with the cherries and berries.
Cooking with Watson has one other benefit for the Bon Appétit test kitchen: "We're always trying to find some sort of hook, or kicker for our recipes," says Perry. In other words, something that gives a recipe some real intrigue and a modern twist, and it often comes after a first round is tested and tasted—like the sweet heat of harissa in this pan-roasted chicken dish. "It's very hard to reinvent the wheel," Perry said. Watson, however, gives that to you right up front (hello, oyster sauce on ribs).
Still, Perry admitted, users needn't feel boxed in by Watson's suggestions. "If I could have done this over," she said, "I would have eliminated some of the ingredients—19 different ingredients for ribs is just too much." How do Chef Watson's creators feel about this? Pinel just laughed. "It's a jumping-off point," he said. "If you don't use every single ingredient, Watson's not going to come yell at you." He paused to take another bite of cobbler. "This is all about inspiration."
Chef Watson also generated ideas for a potato salad that didn't make it on our Fourth of July menu. Not because we were stumped. Nope, we simply didn't have time in that day of testing to get to it—we're not machines, you know. Now, however, we're leaving the creative work to you. Below is Chef Watson's suggested ingredients for a potato salad—take them into the kitchen and do with them what you will! Create your own original recipe using every ingredient (the proportions are up to you, but no additional ingredients except water) and submit your finished recipe to askba@bonappetit.com. No bonus points for cooking and photographing your dish, but that would be extra-cool if you did it. We'll announce our favorites here soon.
Your Potato Salad Should Include:
potato, watercress, scallion, ginger, black peppercorns, vegetable oil, canola oil, oregano, thyme, buttermilk, dark brown sugar, mayonnaise
And as Chef Watson would say, "1000011001101!" That's binary (we think) for "Get cooking!"
[#### Want to beta-test Chef Watson yourself? Click here for more details.
](http://bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/article/beta-test-chef-watson)