Culinary Adventures with AI

Chef Claude’s Fridge Frenzy

We’re taking a bit of a break today and having some fun. Today, we’re putting our favourite AI to the test by challenging it to create recipes using only a few select ingredients. We’ll be asking Claude to whip up three distinct meals: something for on-the-go, a date night special, and a decadent dessert. And yes, we actually did prepare them. Get ready for a culinary adventure like no other!

We wanted to give Claude a challenge, and see what it can think up off with a very limiting selection. We’re not sure what to expect, but that’s part of the fun. These are the ingredients we gave Claude:

1. White Sliced Bread
2. Mayonnaise
3. A Can of Beer
4. A Can of Lentils
5. Butter
6. Milk
7. Cheese
8. Tomato Paste

Another design choice of this experiment is the type of meal to prepare. We’ve seen many AI Generated recipe attempts that simply asked for a vague “meal”. Our decision was to give it three different types of meals so it can truly prove itself and make this interesting:

1. Something for On-the-Go
2. A Date Night Meal
3. A Dessert to Top Things Off

Our designated cook will be preparing all of this food – personifying the AI in this challenge. Hopefully, our cook can pull it off and have everything ready for tomorrow for their busy day and date.

Putting all of this together we had this as our final prompt

User: 

[Ingredients]

[Meal Types]

You're an expert chef, and you come home to an empty fridge. You don't have much left apart from the above ingredients. 
Your task is to use these ingredients, and only these ingredients to create 3 small meals fitting the following meal types:

[Meal Types]

Seasonings can count if you really need them.

To which the AI responded enthusiastically…

Claude:

Alright, let's get creative with these limited ingredients and whip up three delightful meals!

We’ll unveil each one of the recipes in the rest of the blog post. But without spoiling anything: The results truly were creative and possibly a bit overambitious.

Recipe 1: Something for the Go

1.  Something for On-the-Go: Lentil and Cheese Sandwich
   - Ingredients: White sliced bread, lentils, cheese, mayo (optional)
   - Preparation: Drain and rinse the lentils. Mash them with a fork or blend them into a coarse paste. Mix in grated cheese and a dollop of mayo (if desired) for added creaminess. Spread the lentil mixture on two slices of bread and make a sandwich. You can toast the bread for extra crunch.

As a starting item, a lentil sandwich already makes this experiment a bit unsettling. But we have hope. Let’s take a moment to see what Midjourney thinks the outcome would look like, just so we know what we’re aiming for:

Not bad. But let’s see if we can pull it off.

The process was easy enough, but the instructions weren’t as detailed as they could be. Meaning there’s plenty of room for human error on top of the possible AI error. The cook followed the instructions as best as they could, and the result was interesting to say the least:

The result might seem a bit bland, but really, it stood out as a completely viable and vegetarian meal. If you really didn’t have anything else in the fridge, this sandwich would work for the night.

When it came to the taste test, not everyone had the chance to try the meal. However the cook gave us their feedback – as well as the feedback of their partner:

• Cook’s rating: 5/10 – “Not bad, but definitely needs a lot of good seasoning.”
• Partner’s rating: 6/10 – “If I had nothing else, maybe I’d eat this.”

Recipe 2: A Date Night Meal

2. A Date Night Meal: Beer-Battered Cheese Bites with Tomato Dip
   - Ingredients: White sliced bread, beer, cheese, tomato paste, butter, milk (optional)
   - Preparation: Cut the bread into cubes and grate the cheese. In a bowl, mix the beer with a pinch of salt and pepper to create a batter. Dip the bread cubes and cheese pieces into the batter and fry them in melted butter until golden brown. For the dip, mix the tomato paste with a splash of milk (or water) and season with salt, pepper, and any available herbs or spices.

The next part of the experiment was probably the hardest. The AI not only had to deal with the few ingredients given to it, but also the pressure of expectation. A date night meal shouldn’t just be good, but impressive. However if you take a close look at the instructions, this really is just bread dipped in beer. Will it work out? We’ll see. But first let’s have a look at what we’re aiming for:

Fantastic.

But how realistic is this final render? As our cook was attempting to make this, the beer batter was quite problematic. Especially in how it dissolved the chunks of bread to a pulp. To make things worse, the bread chunks couldn’t even be removed from the pan for proper plating. Maybe it was intentional – the AI’s way of reducing the dishes that would need to be washed.

The result really was disappointing. And the best part of the dish was probably the tomato dip. While the meal really didn’t deliver, the cook felt like it was on the right track. If you had better quality white bread, and more importantly eggs and flour to make the batter into., an actual batter – the recipe could work. Sadly, we didn’t have the ingredients to try it out, and had to leave this recipe as a massive loss.

• Cook’s rating: 3/10 – “The texture was a bit soggy, and the bread choice wasn’t great.”
• Partner’s rating: 1/10 – “This was for date night? More like a break-up night.”

Recipe 3: A Dessert

A Dessert to Top Things Off: Bread Pudding with Cheese Sauce
   - Ingredients: White sliced bread, milk, cheese, butter
   - Preparation: Tear the bread into small pieces and place them in a baking dish. In a saucepan, heat the milk with a pinch of salt and any available spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla extract, etc.). Pour the hot milk mixture over the bread pieces and let it soak for a few minutes. Grate or crumble the cheese and mix it into the bread mixture. Bake the bread pudding in the oven until set and golden brown on top. For the cheese sauce, melt some butter in a saucepan, whisk in grated cheese, and thin it out with a splash of milk until you reach the desired consistency.

The final recipe. We had our hopes high, but expectations low. Mostly because this is a bread pudding, something that should be really hard to mess up. Usually all you need is bread, milk and something sweet. But already this version is a bit more complicated, and includes a beer based sauce – who knows, it might work out.

As always Midjourney delivers an amazing image, making us hopeful and hungry.

According to our cook, the recipe was simple and straightforward. However, the bread caused some issue being a bit too soggy it really didn’t have any structure, and baking it mostly just caused the milk to completely evaporate. Maybe there’s some hope, as long as its sweet it might qualify as a dessert.

A perfect re-creation. While the look of it isn’t the most appitizing, the sauce smelt wonderful. Almost a tangy apple sauce. It didn’t change the fact the final dish looked unaspiring, and also disintegrated upon touching it. It did however, fair a bit better in the taste test:

• Cook’s rating: 6/10 – “Not bad, but the texture could be improved with better bread.”
• Partner’s rating: 2/10 – “Horrible texture, and the flavours didn’t mix well.”

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That’s it for our little experiment. What have we learnt for this challenge? AI isn’t always magic but can be fun to try out none the less.

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