Whenever I call my mom to ask how to make something, I always get really vague advice like, “Cook it until it’s thick, but not too thick” or “Add a couple smallish handfuls of flour.” Or she gives me measurements in weights, which was how she was taught to cook, rather than volumes. This futuristic idea would capture and canonize Mom’s cooking for anyone to reproduce perfectly.
Spanish product design student Carlos Gurpegui came up with a kitchen setup that records video, audio, temperatures, times—pretty much everything a person does inside the setup. This could be especially helpful for cooks like my mom, who don’t work by recipes and don’t know the standard measures for what they do. Perhaps it could help capture traditional recipes that haven’t been written down, preserving them for future generations.
Gurpegui submitted the idea to the Electrolux Design Lab, an annual international competition for design students to sketch out high-tech home appliances. PopSci has covered Electrolux Design Lab ideas over the past few years.
The competition’s first-place winner gets a six-month internship at Electrolux, an appliance company based in Sweden, plus 5,000 euros (about $6,500). Gurpegui’s idea is one of about 100 selected from 1,700 applications in the first round, according to Electrolux.