# A Philosophy of Recipes: Making, Experiencing, and Valuing  ## Metadata - Author: [[Andrea Borghini, Patrik Engisch]] - Full Title: A Philosophy of Recipes: Making, Experiencing, and Valuing - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/451747968 ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > When we cook, we aim for (re)producing certain gustatory experiences we give value to and making them available at different places and times. Recipes are what allows us to do that. They are guides to taste: to get the desired gustatory experience, we just have to (re)produce a proper instance of the right recipe—or find the right recipe. For example, you like the taste of saffron risotto and really want to enjoy it again at home for dinner tonight. What do you do? Well, you cook it: you (re)produce a proper instance of saffron risotto and thereby you get to enjoy once again that taste you were desperately craving for. Now, in virtue of what do recipes guide us to taste? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqysf2fprv9ed312j95jyker)) > , is it true that a recipe possesses its taste essentially? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqy577wjg7b0bbdwavp4jy22)) > : “anything that is ready for someone to be eaten up” (2015: 722) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqy5a2j2xxcjg53hmk3yh8jq)) > Secondly, strictly speaking, only five basic gustatory properties count as taste properties: sweetness, sourness, bitterness, saltiness, and umaminess. However, my ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqy5awf8m5brv2naw1b5vjgm)) > use of “taste property” here will be broader to include also what are typically referred to as flavors, namely, properties such as aroma, fruitiness, herbalness, meatiness, and smokiness.2 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqy5azyr8n3dvekbh9949dfn)) > Rather, what I mean is that recipes are somehow associated with some set of properties that determine a certain type of gustatory profile. Such a type of gustatory profile is what I mean here by “taste of a recipe.” From now on, I will use expressions such as “taste of a recipe,” “type of gustatory profile associated with a recipe,” “taste properties associated with a recipe” interchangeably, unless otherwise specified. Is there a unique type of gustatory profile for every recipe or can there be more? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqy5e2vb10fe45y8m8rw0ztp)) > The matzo pill. Matzo is the unleavened flatbread consumed by Jewish people during Passover. Suppose that, for some reasons, one day some genius scientist comes up with a chewable pill that perfectly replicates all the taste properties of a matzo that you would eat during a Passover seder. So, the matzo pill tastes just like a piece of matzo bread—they are indistinguishable and, indeed, the same taste-wise. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqy5r5btbd58y5638b582jpe)) > Consider, for example, pizza margherita—it allows for a good number of variations in taste. To be sure, a pie of Neapolitan pizza margherita and a pie of, say, Pizza Hut or Domino’s pizza margherita taste quite different. Both might taste good, but they do seem to have two different types of taste. This variety of taste-types associated with the same recipe militates against imposing taste as a necessary condition for the identity of a recipe. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqy5tympaw6n40hejzg9tdpg)) > This takes us to the second horn of the dilemma, (ii). The only way to block the over-proliferation of recipes and preserve their repeatability is to impose a cutoff, a threshold beyond which micro-level differences are no longer relevant to individuate ingredients. This implies to stop at a certain level of fine-ness of grain. But the weak essentialist cannot really follow this path and save their view. For as we have seen, whatever the level of fine-ness of grain, an appropriate version of the Authentic Margherita case can be generated that challenges the determination claim and makes the initial problem reappear. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kqy6becdxpkdyehs4qrwsf0y))