Robot tastes for authenticity

GUSTATORY

Taste is subjective, yet a robot has now been developed to taste the authenticity of Thai cuisine, writes Jonathan Head

At a small laboratory in a Bangkok suburb, a group of scientists has come up with what they hope is the answer to an old conundrum: how to tell if a Thai dish is authentic or not. It carries the simple name e-Delicious, and it takes the form of a box about the size of a large printer, containing sensors, and some computer circuitry, which acts as an
electronic tongue and nose.

It was developed by Thailand’s National Innovation Agency, at a total cost of $1
million, after former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinwatra complained about the poor versions of Thai food she was subjected to during her overseas trips. Around 200 people were invited to sample different versions of classic Thai dishes like tom yum gung (sour prawn soup) and kaeng khiao wan (green curry). Whichever version was the consensus winner was taken as the standard, although the designers acknowledge that as the
sampling was done in Bangkok, inevitably their standards for now are Bangkok
versions.

The e-Delicious machine has nine sensors in it to measure the balance of six Thai flavours - sweet, sour, bitter, salty, savory and spicy - and the food’s aroma. There is also a sensor to assess the dish’s visual presentation, which is always very important in Thai cooking.

Mozart of the wok

We decided to give the e-Delicious a test. We had seen it sample low-cost versions of the recipes in its database - only three for now, but soon to reach 10 - and found them all wanting. But how would it cope with the tom yum gung that is judged by many in Bangkok to be the finest in the city?

Jay Fai, is sometimes called the ‘Mozart of the Wok’, for the lightning speed and instinctive flair with which she wields that most essential tool for East Asian cooking. People queue up for her tom yum gung , despite a price tag that reaches $50 for a large bowl.

Watching her hurling great handfuls of herbs into the furiously boiling pot, it is hard to see any precision. And yet, after a couple of minutes she produces a soup of exquisite, overpowering taste and aroma. Once eaten, never forgotten, and for this
reviewer, never equalled.

At the Thai Delicious lab we spooned some of Jay Fai’s soup into two glass beakers - one for taste, one for smell - and slid them into the e-Delicious machine. After a minute’s processing, it delivered its verdict: For taste, 90 per cent. For aroma, 100 per cent - the highest score of any tom yum gung it had assessed. So, perhaps a machine can judge great cooking, after all.

Taste is subjective

For a final view, I called the chef at the first Thai restaurant ever to win a Michelin star: David Thompson, a true global culinary celebrity. His Bangkok restaurant Nahm has repeatedly been voted as one of the world’s finest. “It’s an impossible dream, to set one standard,” he said. “Taste is so subjective. There are standards, but the art of cooking is the epitome of humanity, with differences in taste, seasoning and technique that
express the cook’s character... A robot can never analyse the product of the human hand.”