Someone recently asked a top chef in Sweden, “Do you always have to taste your own food?” He answered, “Not as long as I have cooked it myself.”
From that simple question came a dozen more questions: “Can chefs cook together without direct communication? And what if all actions in the cooking process are direct reactions to other chef’s decisions?” Out of a quest to answer those questions, the Collaborative Cooking Project was born.
Petter Johansson of PJADAD, Christian Isberg, Carl Berglöf, and Lasse Korsgaard are questioning traditional cooking methods and asking what food would be like if it were more about experimentation vs. tradition, and if new technology can be used to revitalize cooking. Sparking a new discussion around cooking, they’ve created a Collaborative Cooking Machine that lives online and can be accessed anywhere in the world.
Essentially, the machine allows five different chefs to cook together and engage in a digital discussion, no matter where they are. They choose the ingredients (up to 35), heat, stirring, and then perform the actual cooking process together. When one participant performs an action, a lamp lights up and a receipt is printed, creating an archive of steps that’s stored physically and digitally. This makes it easy for anyone to recreate the process. One cooking session can last for 10 to 20 hours, and results in a discussion about food that’s documented in addition to the final dish that’s ready to be served.
See the machine in action:
