A design perspective on culinary innovation: Insights from design theories on Alain Ducasse cooking

Typically, the start of a culinary innovation process is usually characterized as an "Idea Generation" phase, where a cooking chef gather some skills in creative thinking by fetching harmonious and tasty combination of ingredients and ideas. In this framework, the process of culinary design is considered as a black box, while recent design theories have provided models of ideation and of early phases of innovation that could help uncover the mechanisms of culinary design. Our paper explores how design theories shed light on how chefs re-interpret classics and innovate in their kitchen by stepping from tradition. Our study unveils two design strategies used by chefs to reinvent classics, focusing on the nature of the set of functions a recipe aims to fulfill (such as a sweet taste or a meltingly soft beef meat). The first strategy consists in keeping the same functions of the original recipe while changing the means to achieve it. The second one requires changing the set of functions by removing or adding new ones, and occasionally designing new ways to achieve these functions. This paper is therefore a contribution to the understanding of culinary design, and proposes as well insights on reinterpreting a classic in a broader sense, which is a well-known design approach used in various contexts.