"Everything said is said by an observer." – Maturana and Varela, Autopoiesis
Goal: Implement a DSL to simplify means for defining good recipes rapidly, while using computational tools to catch errors and inconsistencies, scale portions, calculate yields, and so on.
The seed crazy idea behind the scenes here is to consider how human cooks behave somewhat like robots, following recipes as instructions. Recipes make cooks "programmable" to some extent.
Conversely, what if detailed cooking instructions could be expressed in a way that was computable and represented independently of specific human languages? In other words, representing the processes of cooking as source code plus semi-structured data?
This project is an application of contemporary software engineering to how people in professional kitchens think about their work.
Code in Bwyd language represents the "structure" and "art" of cooking, which can then be parameterized and rendered as text to generate recipes for a broader audience of home cooks.
A secondary use for Bwyd as a DSL is to provide an intermediate for leveraging Generative AI to manipulate recipes with the quality required by use in professional kitchens.
These represent dimensionless structures, as the ratios (by weight) of key components in cooking.
A close programming analogy would be abstract classes.
Per author Michael Ruhlman, Ratios represent
"the truth of cooking, all that is unchanging, fixed, elemental.
Structure defines the "craft" of cooking.
In practice, Ratio objects allow for scaling recipes.
These define process, based on Ratios, for how to use ingredients,
equipment, and techniques to make specific products.
A close programming analogy would be generators, and internally these behave similar to Petri nets with pre- and post- conditions. Recalling "Old School" AI from the 1980s, these function much like unpopulated frames.
Codifying the practice, Closure objects describe steps in cooking,
specifying parameterizations (scale, ingredient substitutions) and
describing yields produced, while consuming recursively from other
Closure definitions within a personalized library.
CLOSURE: "cookie dough"
// commands...
YIELD (100 g)
Process defines the "art" of cooking.
In practice, Closure objects allow for team collaboration and
planning within in a professional kitchen work environment.
These represent the experienced end-consumer of a graph of
parameterized Closure objects, for a particular event.
A close programming analogy would be logs for one CI pipeline
instance, where ops data gets collected and feedback may be
used to guide subsequent modifications of the Closure
definitions which were invoked.
Experience defines the shared "communication" of cooking.
In practice, Observable objects collect audience annotations
(photos, comments, stories, successs/failures) for recipes.