Cooking is what enabled the evolution of the human race and contributes to its survival. But over time, we stopped eating purely for sustenance; food also had to taste well and look great.

Today, in its highest form, food must appeal to all five senses.

So in this episode of ‘Bite On This’ we ask the question—is food art or science?

For art, we are joined by iconic chef and hotelier Virender Singh Datta. In a career spanning 50 years, he has held important positions in some of the most well-known hotels in India and abroad.

He says, “Cooking was always an art. If you give the same ingredients to two different cooks, they will come up with very different variations of a dish.”

As for the science, we speak to Ganesh Bagler, a professor and scientist at the Centre for Computational Biology, IIIT Delhi. His lab has been researching the unique elements of Indian cuisine that make it so delicious.

He says, “Cooking and culinary art are considered generally as artistic endeavours and rightfully so, but computational gastronomy quantifies various aspects of food and cooking, by integrating data and application of computational techniques, like statistical analysis, pattern mining, machine learning, etc.”

We also hear from two youngsters, making food art, literally!

Shilpa Mitha makes food miniatures with clay under ‘Sueno Souvenir’ and Oorjitha Dogiparthi uses all kinds of papers for food miniatures under ‘Oorugami’.

Check out the full episode!