Culinary Expertise Research Articles

A decision making model for selection of café location: An ANP approach

Decision-making in business location selection is a challenging task for companies because it involves multiple alternatives and criteria. Previous studies have investigated this problem using various approaches, and AHP/ANP-based decision-making approach is the most used one due to its capabilities in dealing with the complex problem. Although numerous studies have adopted AHP/ANP approach in determining the business location, but most of them were conducted in the large-scale enterprises and not in the context of culinary business such as cafe. This study is intended for selecting the best business location alternative in the context of small enterprise of culinary industry. We developed a decision-making model based on theories and experiences of the culinary expert to choose the best café location. A total of five major criteria we identified namely location characteristics, demography, competition, physical features, and cost. Each major criterion consists of elements that range from two to five elements. Because there are relationships among elements, therefore we develop a network model, which depicts the criteria, sub criteria, alternatives, and their interactions. We apply ANP by using expert opinion to analyse the importance of each criterion and the rank of each alternative. The final result displays that the competitor strength is the highest importance for small enterprises in selecting the best business location.

Preliminary research development of professional competency-based mathematics learning devices in the culinary expertise program

This study discusses the preliminary research stage in developing professional learning based mathematics learning tools in culinary skills programs for vocational high school students. At the preliminary research stage interviews were conducted with mathematics teachers and students of class X vocational high school. Based on the results of interviews with mathematics teachers, the learning tools used are still general without regard to the professional competence of students, therefore it is necessary to improve the learning of mathematics by taking into account the professional competence of pesetas students especially in culinary skills programs. The problems in the learning tools that were developed were related to the profession of students in the culinary skills program, including the hotel, restaurant, hospital, service and flight cheffs.

Tradition, Authenticity and Expertise in and through Cypriot Easter flaounes

Flaounes are festive cheese pies that are widely produced and consumed at Easter time in Cyprus. Practices around flaounes offer a prime site for positive self-presentation, where performance of culinary expertise intersects with gendered roles and constructions of Cypriotness. This article explores how preparing, consuming and evaluating flaounes are interactionally constructed in everyday practices. It focuses on naturally occurring interactions, as well as written accounts and ethnographic interviews with Greek Cypriot participants residing in various regions of Cyprus and in the UK diaspora. In this article, an ethnomethodological approach to identities, culture and society is applied to analyse the participants’ local understandings of themselves and their social world and of categorizations of authenticity, tradition and change. It is shown that members, even when addressing the cultural and historical significance of flaounes, problematize categorizations of authenticity, while they construct tradition as compatible with innovation and change. Authenticity is found to be very much a researchers’ or food marketing concept. For participants, however, the categorizations that have more relevance and importance relate to the taste and quality of the flaounes and the expertise of the maker. Expertise in flaounes results from community learning, reflexive experimentation and contestation, and carries substantial symbolic, social and political capital in Cypriot communities.

Quality culinary workforce competencies for sustainable career development among culinary professionals

Competencies are vital factors that provide an incredible impact on individuals' career sustainability. However, the lack of guidelines has made it difficult to define and measure these competencies. This study attempted to identify important competencies that are deemed essential for culinary professionals in the hospitality industry. The qualitative research design composed of document analysis and interviews with culinary experts in Malaysia. The qualitative data were used to form the framework of the Star-Chef Competency Model, which consists of six identified competency constructs. The compilation of the identified competency statements was fully utilised in the development of the competency model and is believed to be a very helpful guidance for culinary professionals in Malaysian hospitality industry. Findings provide culinary educators and trainers with useful insights on important competencies that need to be emphasized in the training and education of professional chefs.

An Academia-Industry Partnership for Planning and Executing a Community-Based Feeding Study

A research team from Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School conducted a community-based feeding study in collaboration with Framingham State University (FSU) and Sodexo, the food service contractor at FSU. The study was a randomized controlled trial, implemented on the FSU campus. For the final year of the study, a satellite feeding site was established at Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School. The purpose of the study was to assess the biological effects of different macronutrient diets. An academia-industry partnership was developed to overcome common challenges associated with hospital-based feeding studies. Benefits included the following: a study site outside of Boston (reducing inconvenience for participants), access to a large commercial kitchen and study-specific kiosk (promoting efficiency), collaboration with Sodexo chefs (ensuring palatability of meals), and opportunity to procure food from contracted vendors. The research (academia) and food service (industry) teams worked together to design, plan, and execute intervention protocols using an integrated approach. During execution, the research team was primarily responsible for overseeing treatment fidelity, whereas the food service team provided culinary expertise, with a strong focus on hospitality and food quality. The study was conducted in 3 cohorts between August 2014 and May 2017. Participants received all of their food for ∼30 wk, totaling >160,000 meals. For all 3 cohorts combined, 234 participants provided informed consent, 229 started a standard run-in weight-loss diet, 164 lost a mean ± SD 12% ± 2% of baseline body weight and were randomly assigned to different macronutrient diets for weight-loss maintenance, and 148 completed the study. During the final and largest cohort, as many as 114 participants received daily meals concurrently. The daily cost per participant for preparation and service of weighed meals and snacks was ∼$65. This academia-industry partnership provides a model for controlled feeding protocols in nutrition research, potentially with enhanced cost-effectiveness, practicality, and generalizability. This trial was registered at http://www.clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02068885.

The integration of nutrition components into culinary programs: perspectives of experts and educators

ABSTRACTConsumers are increasingly eager for healthier food selections, but not at the expense of taste. As the foodservice industry continues to respond to these trends, graduates from culinary and hospitality programs are expected to be trained to meet these changing needs. The aim of the study was to compare industry experts’ and educators’ perceived importance of nutritional competencies in culinary curriculum, as well as the perceived barriers to integrate nutritional competency in accredited culinary programs. The study analyzed data provided by two U.S.-based groups of participants: (1) culinary and industry experts, and (2) educators in culinary and hospitality management programs. Results indicate that experts view nutritional competency as important to a student’s program of study and that success depends on educators meeting these competencies. However, the analysis reveals that educators significantly undervalue the importance of nutritional competency placement in curriculum and overrate how well they are preparing culinary graduates.

The role of aromatic similarity in food and beverage pairing

Aromatic similarity is often mentioned by culinary experts and Sommeliers as a basic principle for matching food and beverages. The aim of this study was to investigate how this pairing principle modulates consumers’ judgment of pairings.Two kinds of beverage-food pairing were considered: syrup based lemon soft drink paired with aromatized dairy product (experiment 1) and beer flavoured with either lemon or smoky aroma paired with savoury verrines (experiment 2). In each experiment the flavoured drinks were associated with food flavoured with either the same aroma or another one, leading to two contrasting levels of aromatic similarity. We hypothesized that aromatic similarity would increase the liking of the pairing by increasing perceived harmony and homogeneity and decreasing complexity. Pairings were assessed by a group of about 50 participants in a within experimental design.Experiment 1 confirmed our hypotheses. The pair that shared an aroma was preferred over the pair with different aromas. Aromatic similarity also increased the pairing’s perceived harmony and homogeneity and decreased the pairing’s complexity. Experiment 2 also supported our hypothesis but to a lesser extent. For lemon beer pairings, aromatic similarity induced an increase in harmony and homogeneity but did not affect complexity. In contrast, for smoky beer pairings, aromatic similarity did not affect harmony or homogeneity but induced a decrease in complexity. Moreover no effect or only a marginal effect was observed on liking. We suggest a model that could account for these results in which aromatic similarity would impact liking of the pair by modulating collative properties, specifically harmony and complexity, of the food-beverage pairing.

The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (JHSOM) Teaching Kitchen: A Novel Recipe for Nutrition Education

To develop and implement an interactive educational model to equip medical students with the skills to address the increasing prevalence of nutrition-related diseases. Although the public generally considers doctors as “very credible” sources of nutrition information, nutrition is generally underemphasized in medical school curricula and most students do not feel adequately trained in nutritional counseling. To address the deficiency of nutrition education in the medical profession, “Teaching Kitchens” have emerged as interactive, hands-on methods for nutrition education. The conceptual framework behind the “Teaching Kitchen” model is based on the general goals of providing nutrition knowledge that enables physicians to counsel patients on nutrition-related issues and serve as role models of healthy dietary practices. The JHSOM Teaching Kitchen is unique in that it was student-initiated and founded by first year medical students who recruited faculty mentors as well as registered dietitians and culinary experts. This multidisciplinary team with medical, nutrition, and culinary expertise have worked together to develop an engaging curriculum to convey essential nutrition knowledge and culinary skills that students can use to counsel patients on the impact of food and diet on their health. Pre and post-surveys are administered to evaluate the impact of Teaching Kitchen sessions on culinary skills and nutrition knowledge and determine improvement strategies for future sessions. The “Teaching Kitchen” model provides a multidisciplinary and innovative platform for medical students to gain nutrition knowledge and practical culinary skills. Moreover, this model is a promising method to equip the medical profession with the knowledge and skills necessary to address the global increase in nutrition-related diseases.

Sensory and consumer research in culinary approaches to food

Encouraging food scientists to cooperate with culinary experts opens ways for optimized food offers as well as innovative products and services. Knowing better the work of professionals from the food service and gastronomy sectors brings a holistic vision enriching methodological questions of sensory and consumer scientists. It is proposed to make links between foodservice research on meal experience, mainly exploring human sciences, and sensory and consumer science. Three disciplines were selected to complement current sensory and consumer practices: semantics and the study of food culture , cognitive psychology and multisensory perception , and linguistics and dish label . Moreover, a greater basic knowledge is still needed to model the various factors influencing consumer perception, choice and preference in real-life situations, opening new avenues for further research and the modeling of the meal experience.

Analysis and Design of Web-Based Database Application for Culinary Community

This research is based on the rapid development of the culinary and information technology. The difficulties in communicating with the culinary expert and on recipe documentation make a proper support for media very important. Therefore, a web-based database application for the public is important to help the culinary community in communication, searching and recipe management. The aim of the research was to design a web-based database application that could be used as social media for the culinary community. This research used literature review, user interviews, and questionnaires. Moreover, the database system development life cycle was used as a guide for designing a database especially for conceptual database design, logical database design, and physical design database. Web-based application design used eight golden rules for user interface design. The result of this research is the availability of a web-based database application that can fulfill the needs of users in the culinary field related to communication and recipe management.

The fine and the tasteless. Istrian culinary experts and taste

The fine and the tasteless. Istrian culinary experts and taste

Healthy Bistro Project: Blending Dietetics and Culinary Expertise

Healthy Bistro Project: Blending Dietetics and Culinary Expertise

2013 Lenna Frances Cooper Memorial Lecture: Bringing Cooking Back: Food and Culinary Expertise as a Key to Dietitians' Future Success

2013 Lenna Frances Cooper Memorial Lecture: Bringing Cooking Back: Food and Culinary Expertise as a Key to Dietitians' Future Success

Constructing the Politics of Cookery: Authorial Strategy and Domestic Politics in English Cookery Books, 1655-1670

This essay argues that authors of English cookery texts in the 1650s, sixties, and seventies debated not only changing ideas and behaviors surrounding cooking, service, and feasting, but were also participating in a renegotiation and redefinition of other Restoration subjects such as public versus private spaces, domesticity, gender roles, and social class. This article considers five cookery texts published between the years 1656 and 1670: two works of royalist propaganda that adopted the form of the cookery book, The Queens Closet Opened (1656), attributed to Henrietta Maria, and The Court & Kitchin of Elizabeth (1664), attributed to Elizabeth Cromwell; two works by professional male cooks, The Accomplisht Cook (1661) by Robert May, and The Whole Art of Cookery Dissected (1661) by William Rabisha; and The Queen-Like Closet (1670) by Hannah Wolley, England’s first professional female writer and cookery book author. In these works, domestic spaces and activities – as well as the emerging form of the cookery text itself – become a sort of battleground on which men and women vied to construct and defend their authority as culinary experts and authors of printed cookery books. Simultaneously, these authors were actively engaged in a debate about English nationhood in the Restoration and what kinds of people could or should participate in the politics of good housekeeping.

Gettin’ Down Home With the Neelys: gastro-porn and televisual performances of gender, race, and sexuality

This article illuminates how performances of gender, race, and sexuality are integrated with representations of food and food performance in contemporary American cooking television. Interrogating the intersections of food, gender, race, sexuality, and performance, this essay explores how the cable-television show, Down Home with the Neelys, depicts a nouveau gastro-porn anchored in the perceived pornographic level of blackness itself. The author reveals the ways that food and performances of food become a medium of gendering and racialization employed by American popular media. Through the lens of reality television, shows like Down Home (re)produce a certain type of black heterosexuality and gendered enactments of domesticity and space, while challenging dominant televisual reflections of black love and labor. The author argues that the Neelys self-consciously employ a vernacular aesthetic performative of “down home” (a uniquely classed, temporally–spatially situated, and sexualized blackness) to exploit the phenomenon of gastro-porn in a highly lucrative performance that signals the entangled artifice of gender, race, and sexuality. More than offering culinary expertise and education, such cooking instruction reveals the pedagogy of gender, race, and sexuality as visual lessons of a complex and contradictory authenticity. This essay reveals television cooking shows as critical sites for considering the domestic laboring of gendered and racialized sexualities. In particular, shows like Down Home evince the ways that race continues to be rendered in visual terms and the enduring edibility of blackness.

How Accurate Are Your Nutrient Calculations? Why Culinary Expertise Makes a Difference

This article is reprinted from the September 2008 issue of the Journal (2008;108:1418-1422). How Accurate Are Your Nutrient Calculations? Why Culinary Expertise Makes a DifferenceJournal of the American Dietetic AssociationVol. 108Issue 9PreviewFood manufacturers and producers have been required to provide standardized information for the Nutrition Facts Label since passage of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 (1). Freshly prepared, institutional, and restaurant foods were not required to carry this information. At the national level, nutrient disclosure on menus is voluntary. Some local governments have mandated nutrition information on menu items of multi-unit restaurants and other government bodies are considering similar legislation. Full-Text PDF

Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives: Caring for Our Patients and Ourselves

Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives (HKHL) is a continuing medical education conference developed through a partnership between Harvard Medical School and The Culinary Institute of America. The annual event brings more than 400 attendees, including physicians from a wide range of specialties, registered dietitians, and other health care professionals, to The Culinary Institute of America campus in Napa Valley, Calif., each spring. Conference faculty include researchers and practitioners from Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, and Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals; guest health care faculty from other leading research and teaching facilities; registered dietitians and chef-instructors from The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena, Calif.; and guest chefs and world cuisine culinary experts from across the United States. HKHL is designed to mimic medical training. In medical school, students “see one, do one, teach one.” Similarly, the 4-day HKHL conference combines lectures, culinary demonstrations, culinary workshops, hands-on kitchen sessions, and meals to create multiple opportunities for participants to “see one, taste one, make one.” This article will discuss the impact health care providers' personal health habits can have on the habits of their patients, describe the culinary nutrition goals taught in HKHL, review the evidence that supports these goals, and provide practical tips for health care professionals and their patients for making changes to their shopping, cooking, and eating habits. Do health care professionals' own eating habits directly or indirectly influence the eating habits of their patients? We know that other patient health habits may be influenced by the behaviors of the health care providers. For example, there is evidence that physicians who do not smoke are more likely than physicians who do smoke to encourage their patients to stop smoking.1 Although a similar study specifically targeting eating habits has not yet been completed, we have heard …

The Development of a Scale for Evaluating Creative Culinary Products

The purpose of this study was to develop a “Scale for Evaluating Creative Culinary Products” based on the nature of these products. We adopted the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) to establish the credibility of the scale. The scale comprises 8 categories: professional technique; aroma, taste, and texture; color; modeling and arrangement; garnish; dishware; handling of ingredients; and overall assessment. There are 34 assessment criteria for these 8 categories. Nine culinary experts were invited to evaluate, by means of these criteria, the products of 28 college students studying Chinese cuisine. The degree of interjudge reliability was .98, and the correlation between each criterion and the total scale was between .578 and .856. Through confirmatory factor analysis, the scale was demonstrated to possess a high degree of validity.

How Accurate Are Your Nutrient Calculations? Why Culinary Expertise Makes a Difference

Food manufacturers and producers have been required to provide standardized information for the Nutrition Facts Label since passage of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 ( 1 FDA Food Labeling and Nutrition Information for Industry http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/∼dms/lab-ind.html Google Scholar ). Freshly prepared, institutional, and restaurant foods were not required to carry this information. At the national level, nutrient disclosure on menus is voluntary. Some local governments have mandated nutrition information on menu items of multi-unit restaurants and other government bodies are considering similar legislation. In 2008, several chain restaurants have been sued in class action lawsuits for inaccurate information on menus (typically underreporting calories and fat), so restaurants are understandably cautious about supplying nutrition information to customers. Today, however, all facets of the retail and foodservice industries are under pressure to provide nutrient facts and are searching for affordable and accessible ways to produce this information.

From abjection to ecstasy: The emotional ends of eating in Monique Truong's Book of Salt

Nine years after the American writer Gertrude Stein died in 1946, her partner, Alice B. Toklas, composed a cookbook devoted to the culinary adventures that the couple shared in France. Fifty years later, Monique Truong fashioned a novel narrated from the perspective of the Vietnamese cook who worked for the famous couple. While the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook underscores cooking as a medium through which to express cultural authority and expertise in a foreign land, Book of Salt deals directly with food as a colonizer's weapon. By giving voice to a Vietnamese protagonist skilled in French culinary techniques and practices, however, Monique Truong does far more than shed light on culinary colonialism; she underscores cooking as a powerful means of communication and cultural transgression. Like Toklas and Stein, Binh, the narrator of Book of Salt , speaks French haltingly. Like Toklas, however, Binh is eloquently well-versed in French culinary beliefs and practices, a fact that enables him to destabilize myriad power relations. Binh's culinary expertise challenges and dissolves hierarchies that privilege heterosexuality over homosexuality, white over non-white, colonizer over colonized, and stasis over dislocation. This underscores the power of food as a medium of self-construction and cultural defiance.