Forget molecular gastronomy; inkjet gastronomy may be the wave of the future.
Researchers at Cornell University's Computational Synthesis Lab are currently developing a 3-D food "printer" that will be able to create items using raw-food ink syringes. This is just one of the many personal fabrication technologies under their Fab@Home Project.
Each syringe is filled with liquid ingredients that are lined up like the colored inks in a printer, the "recipe" is entered into the computer's CAD software and the syringes go to work and create a food facsimile, creating the lines and layers of the dish.
The scientists have been playing with ingredients that are commonly found in liquid form — chocolate, cookie dough, cheese, and cake batter — and have had success in "creating creating cookies with embedded letters and designer domes made of turkey meat", reports BBC News. Yum.
This article appears in Dec 23-29, 2010.