The Sous Chef

Inspiration

I love cooking. I also love technology and programming. So when I'm in the kitchen, my issue isn't how to make things or techniques used to cook. It's really being creative and coming up with unique combinations. I know that tomatoes, basil, and mozzaralla go together. But what could I do that's different and unique to step it up. The Sous Chef was my answer to this challenge. I can tell (verbally) or select the ingredients I have and it will let me know what I can add to make it better. If I need to substitute a herb or spice for something in a dish that's primarily pomegranate and chicken, it will help me out. I use this app personally every week.

What it does

User input is ingredients. Output is ingredients that go well with those ingredients. It enables users to be more creative, change up recipes, and try something new. It has flavor profiles and types of ingredients to make it more specific. IE: Savory ice cream vs sweet.

How I built it

Android app: Native Android app with all local storage for offline-acces. Alexa app: Python for the backend lambda service. Recommender: Python with a home-brew content-based recommender. Data primarily comes from "The Flavor Bible" as the training set of data.

Challenges I ran into

Data: Collecting the data took time and while not challenging, it was wearing. Android app: No real problems. I had prior experience in this issue. Recommender: As I'll mention below, I really wanted a hybrid content-based and collaborative system. But I do not have enough time to actually implement it.Getting a custom version of content based with some collaborative features was as close as I could get. Alexa: No real problems. I got the hang of many of the issues I had.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Everything. I've wanted this product since graduating college three years ago and I finally did it. I've also released and have had a pretty positive reception from those who have tried it.

What I learned

Breaking personal problems into small sized pieces that are approachable and useable. Often times with personal projects, feature creep happens and you get lost in what your original goal was. This is the first set of tools I've made that I was able to contain the issues, and solve them in a pragmatic way.

What's next for The Sous Chef

Automate data collection by scraping recipes and parsing them into useful training data. Add a real hybrid recommender engine. Add in support for sous-vide recipes, especially in the Alexa app.