在线国产一区二区_成人黄色片在线观看_国产成人免费_日韩精品免费在线视频_亚洲精品美女久久_欧美一级免费在线观看

Global EditionASIA 中文雙語Fran?ais
Opinion
Home / Opinion / Chinese Perspectives

When AI spices up classic Chinese dishes

By Sun Yacheng | China Daily | Updated: 2025-07-22 07:21
Share
Share - WeChat
LI MIN/CHINA DAILY

Budweiser's "recipe" is as meticulous as a battle plan, only that the battle plan is for a brewery: a 30-day brewing process with primary fermentation for exactly six days, followed by 21 days of beechwood aging, with brewmasters tasting each batch at least five times.

Since 1867, when Adolphus Busch perfected the formula, this meticulous process has ensured all Budweiser taste the same, whether you're drinking it in St. Louis or Shanghai.

Now imagine the consequences had Busch, for instance, written, "Ferment until it smells right, age until the color looks good." The company would have collapsed in a short time. Yet this is exactly how most Chinese recipes are written — and yet Chinese cuisine has thrived for millenniums.

Tower of Babel in the Kitchen: "When my American friends ask me for my 'secret' dumpling recipe, I don't know what to tell them." This is a common refrain among overseas Chinese people. In the West, recipes read like laboratory protocols — precise measurements, exact temperature, specific timing. Such a recipe would make a Budweiser brewmaster, who controls the temperature, and pressure and oxygen levels at every stage, most comfortable. But in China, cooking is more like jazz, full of improvisation and personal flair.

In Suzhou Industrial Park of Jiangsu province, a company called Tineco is trying to bridge this Tower of Babel. Yu Jiong, Tineco's global product director, pointed out that the main challenge in standardizing Chinese cuisine lies in the simplicity of Western cooking methods and ingredients. Tineco, which made its name with "smart floor washers", is now tackling a far more complex challenge: teaching machines to understand Chinese cooking through their AI-powered cooking robots.

Consider the numbers: French cuisine has five mother sauces, Italian 10 basic pasta sauce families. But in China, tofu alone has more than 100 preparations, not to mention that each region defines "spicy" differently — Sichuan province's numbing-hot "mala", Hunan province's dry heat, Guizhou province's sour-spiciness — each a completely different experience.

This complexity creates a curious phenomenon. McDonald's can ensure a Big Mac tastes identical, if not the same, in New York City, Paris and Tokyo, but Chinese restaurants, despite being spread globally, rarely venture beyond Chinatowns. Why? Because authentic Chinese food is too alien for most Westerners, and "adapted" American-Chinese cuisine — think General Tso's Chicken or fortune cookies — leaves Chinese diners somewhere between laughter and tears.

"Even di san xian ("three earthly bounties" or stir-fried eggplants, potatoes and peppers) meticulously prepared by a state banquet chef received only 40 percent approval in user testing. If Chinese people themselves can't agree on what tastes good, how can we expect foreigners to grasp the essence of Chinese cuisine? It's like asking someone who's never heard jazz to appreciate Miles Davis.

Lost in translation: In Western kitchens, "caramelization" has a precise scientific definition — sugar begins breaking down at 170 degrees Celsius to produce caramel flavor. Budweiser's mashing process has three specific temperature rests — protein rest, conversion rest and mashing off — each activating different enzymes at an exact temperature. But how do you translate the Chinese term wok hei, or the smoky flavor of stir-fries? The elusive smoky aroma achieved only through extremely high heat and rapid tossing has no equivalent expression in English.

From wok hei to algorithms: The invention of every culinary tool has transformed food culture. The iron wok, for example, was invented during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), when iron production in China reached about 150,000 tons a year, resulting in its widespread adoption, which in turn gave birth to "stir-frying", fundamentally reshaping Chinese cuisine.

Today, AI could trigger a similar revolution. Suppose a Chinese-American youth in Los Angeles wants to recreate grandmother's lion's head meatballs, but his grandma's instruction was only "30 percent fat, 70 percent lean meat, chop until it gets sticky". AI can translate these vague instructions into precise parameters — 30 percent fat content and 150 chops to achieve specific protein cross-linking. AI can also adjust for, or recalibrate, local ingredients, because the fat content of American pork is different from that of the pork available in China.

That Sichuan cuisine is now a best-seller in Suzhou may prove a universal language of taste. How can a dish maintain its cultural identity while appealing to diverse palates?

AI offers an elegant solution: by not creating a compromised "fusion" version, but personalizing for each individual. You can ask for an authentic Sichuan mapo tofu. Or you can say "I'm from Suzhou, make it milder", and the system will adjust accordingly — not simply by reducing chili, but rebalancing the entire flavor profile.

This approach might be the future of Chinese cuisine's globalization — not creating a uniform American version like "Panda Express", but allowing everyone to find their own authentic experience.

While at Budweiser's 12 US breweries, brewmasters gather daily to taste and compare batches, ensuring absolute consistency in every bottle, China's AI kitchens are attempting something far more ambitious: preserving and translating millions of family recipes that exist only in grandmothers' memories.

The next time you see General Tso's Chicken in a New York City Chinese restaurant, remember: real Chinese food is far more complex and fascinating. And there's a way for the world to taste this complexity — not through simplification, but through understanding.

Sun Yacheng is professor of Marketing in the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

If you have a specific expertise, or would like to share your thought about our stories, then send us your writings at opinion@chinadaily.com.cn, and comment@chinadaily.com.cn.

Most Viewed in 24 Hours
Top
BACK TO THE TOP
English
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US
主站蜘蛛池模板: 国产精品毛片一区二区在线看 | 91蝌蚪少妇 | 自拍视频一区 | 中文字幕网址在线 | 亚洲成人黄色 | 一区二区美女 | 日韩精品中文字幕在线观看 | 特一级黄色片 | 国产专区在线 | 亚洲在线中文字幕 | 九九九色 | 97国产在线| 欧美激情国产精品 | 日本成人免费 | 日韩av免费在线播放 | 亚洲福利专区 | 成人久久网站 | 一级片免费网站 | 国产精品一级 | 亚洲免费在线视频 | 五月天激情国产综合婷婷婷 | 黄a视频 | 韩日精品视频 | 欧美一区二区在线 | av高清在线观看 | 成人激情在线 | 国产精品一区二区视频 | 欧美黄色一级视频 | 免费网站观看www在线观看 | 国产日韩在线播放 | 婷婷综合视频 | 国产传媒一区二区 | 中文字幕一二区 | 天天操狠狠干 | 国产黄色一级片 | 黄色一级大片在线免费看产 | 国产成人精品一区二区 | 一级黄色在线观看 | 免费91网站 | 成人a在线 | 91精品国产一区二区三区 |