Suddenly there were three open jars of peanut butter in the house. I had to do something with them, and had been fancying a peanut butter cookie the way Mother used to make them. It started simply enough. I typed “Recipe for vegan peanut butter cookies” in the artificial intelligence chat box. It returned this recipe in a couple of seconds:
Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients
1 cup creamy peanut butter
3/4 cup brown sugar (or coconut sugar)
1/4 cup plant milk (almond, soy, oat, etc.)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a bowl, mix peanut butter and brown sugar until smooth.
Stir in plant milk and vanilla.
Add flour, baking soda, and salt and mix until a dough forms.
Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place on the baking sheet.
Press each with a fork in a crisscross pattern.
Bake 10–12 minutes until edges are lightly golden.
Let cool on the pan for about 5 minutes before moving them.
Resisting a temptation to change the recipe, I made them and mentioned in my chat bot: “I tried. Cookies seemed heavy.”
In its “that can happen” way of hiding failure while attempting to placate me, it responded, “Vegan peanut butter cookies can easily turn out heavy or dense. A few small things usually cause it. Here are the most common fixes and a lighter recipe that tends to work better.” With all the large language modeling, couldn’t you have done something to deal with this before posting the recipe? No. AI can’t help itself.
Back and forth we went, refining the recipe I eventually wrote in the workbook with culinary experiments I will bake them again before putting it in the permanent cookbook. Finally, I said what was on my mind:
To address texture issues, would I be better off to consult cookbooks that place this recipe in the context of a specific culinary culture, such as Regan Daley’s In the Sweet Kitchen: The Definitive Baker’s Companion?
The chat bot immediately searched the internet, presumably to read Daley’s book before answering. There was no indication the machine was stunned by the threat of my leaving its environment to consult actual food authors on the same problem.
In what can only be described as a smarty-pants response, AI came up with this:
Yes — consulting a cookbook like In the Sweet Kitchen: The Definitive Guide to the Baker’s Pantry & Craft by Regan Daley is a very good idea, and your instinct about culinary context is sound. But there are actually two different kinds of cookbooks that solve texture problems, and they help in different ways.
I can’t say how much more I detest the word “but.” It went on to say my whole premise of “vegan peanut butter cookie” was a problem. It responded, “Your specific case (vegan peanut butter cookies) adds another layer.” Didn’t you know that from jump street, I thought.
Artificial intelligence displays little idea how we humans cook. If it were paired with a robot chef, the results could be generic and unsatisfying to the simplest palate.
Next time I’ll know to contact my sister and ask her if there is a copy of Mother’s recipe.
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