résumé ce texte en mettant en avant les hypothèses de l'auteur: The Mystery in the Kitchen: Culinary Creativity - The Mystery in the Kitchen: Culinary Creativity / Meng-Lei (Monica) Hu & Jeou-Shyan Horng / 2008 / Creativity Research Journal,
Jeou-Shyan Horng
Office of Research & Development, Graduate Institute of Hospitality
Management & Education, National Taiwan Normal University
Meng-Lei (Monica) Hu
Department of Food & Beverage Management, Jinwen University of Science and Technology
The purpose of this project was to explore the ways in which culinary creativity fits a
modified version of Wallas’s classic 1926 model of the creative process. In order to analyze the process through which chefs create a specific culinary work (specific dish), the
researchers used a qualitative research method. Seventeen award-winning culinary
artists from around the world were interviewed, and it was shown how the interview
data fit the general categories of Wallas’s 4-phase culinary creativity model—preparing
the idea, idea incubation, idea development, and evaluation of the product—which the
researchers refined via Finke, Ward, and Smith’s 1992 Geneplore model, with its cyclic
cognitive subprocesses. What is presumably the most original part of this contribution,
then, are not the conceptual categories themselves but the actual interview-based data—
the feelings, thoughts, and reflections of top-level international chefs—and the ways in
which they seem to fit the categories of a modified 4-phase creative-process model.
The concept of creativity has been emphasized not only in
psychological research, but also in studies of education,
management, and (of course) the various creative arts,
both fine and applied. However, it seems that creativity
research in the hospitality field, and more specifically in
the domain of culinary arts (cooking), has so far been
insufficient, perhaps because chefs are not so often seen
as culinary artists in the same sense that painters, musicians, and poets are seen as visual, musical, and literary
ones. In fact, the applied side of the hospitality field is
usually in the foreground: hotel and restaurant management. After all, hotels and restaurants supply two of the
three basic human necessities (food, clothing, and shelter),
and the restaurant business or industry is extremely practical precisely because cooking is such a practical skill,
indeed a biologically-driven one. Given that food is necessary to our survival, the culinary arts are arguably the most
vital of all art forms. Yet, perhaps paradoxically, this very
vitality helps to account for why the great chefs have,
themselves, always seemed, in terms of their personalities,
more like fine artists—painters and composers, for
instance, or conductors, maestros of the kitchen.
In the marketing and publishing business in the fields
of literature, music, and fashion—where the fame of
major labels or brands gives them a certain power—
there is an interface between pure artistic creativity
and more practical (financial) considerations. The same
is true of the restaurant business, which can operate
either independently or as one part of the hotel management business. As with novelists, musicians, fashion
designers, and film directors, the individual chef as creative artist might have to compromise with a larger system often driven by very practical concerns. Indeed, in
the case of restaurants, the chef in the kitchen clearly
works for the management (unless he owns the restaurant), and is under a very direct sort of pressure to
use his or her own culinary creativity to bolster the reputation of the restaurant, and thereby attract more paying
customers. As their economic circumstances permit
more and more people to become interested in gastronomy and novel food experiences—moving from food as
Address correspondence to Jeou-Shyan Horng, Office of Research
& Development, Graduate Institute of Hospitality Management &
Education, Department of Human Development & Family Studies,
National Taiwan Normal University, 162, Sec. 1, Hoping E. Rd.,
Taipei 10610, Taiwan. E-mail: <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_EMAIL_ADDRESS>
CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL, 20(2), 221–230, 2008
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1040-0419 print=1532-6934 online
DOI: 10.1080/10400410802060166
a necessity to dining out as a luxury—a given
restaurant’s culinary creativity is increasingly becoming
a competitive advantage that is difficult to clone, and is
increasingly playing a critical role in the financial success of restaurants (Tosh, 1998). In effect, then, the creative quality of culinary products depends not only on
the culinary artist’s own aesthetics, but also on the customers’ culinary tastes and predilections, and the restaurant’s (or hotel’s) organizational efficiency and
resources. The question then arises, as in other artistic
domains: To what degree can this quality remain a
purely aesthetic one? Yet fine cuisine undeniably has
extraordinary aesthetic qualities or values—its appeal
being in the first place to the senses of taste and smell,
and only secondarily to the visual sense.
Although, admittedly, it is hard to know to what extent
the creative process varies according to the artistic field,
that is, the nature of the task (Lubart, 2001; Nemiro,
1997), creativity researchers in general have long been
aware of the importance of both the nature of the final
product and the process of making it. However, we that
there had, so far, been no study focused primarily on
understanding and describing the actual process of culinary creation. Thus was born the guiding idea behind this
project, which set out to explore the process by which culinary artists create a culinary artwork. An interesting (if
incidental) aspect of this project’s findings is that these
tend to qualify the common (Western) stereotype that
Asians (and in particular Chinese) are not highly creative
(Riquelme, 2002); here then, in the kitchen, is one area
(management might be another) where East Asians can
clearly manifest their creative talents.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Although creativity has different meanings in different
disciplines, as well as for different researchers, it has
long been recognized that creation is a psychological
process that requires in-depth thinking. In 1926, Wallas
proposed that the creative process has four phases: the
preparation phase, the incubation phase, the inspiration
phase, and the evaluation phase. Many creative-process
researchers have supported this 4-stage model (Norlander
& Gustafson, 1997, 1998), but it has also received much
criticism. Guilford (1950, p. 451) noted that there was
considerable agreement that the complete creative act
involves four important steps, yet he was not satisfied
with Wallas’ 4-stage description of the creative process.
He thought that such an analysis was very superficial
from the psychological point of view; it seems to be
more dramatic than it is suggestive of testable hypotheses, and it tells researchers almost nothing about the
mental operations that actually occur. Nonetheless, this
4-stage model is still considered the basic framework for
analyzing creativity in cognitive and organizational
psychology, and therefore other theorists tend to presuppose its most general terms even as they try to
modify and refine them.
A general tendency of more recent creative-process
models is their greater emphasis on the subprocesses.
Thus, Runco (1991) pointed out that the evaluation
phase of the individual creative process had still received
little attention. One model that more clearly departs
from Wallas’ (1926) classical model, even if still sharing
some ideas with it, is that of Basadur, Runco, and Vega
(2000); in this model, creativity includes three phases:
continuum, variation, and circulation. Finke, Ward,
and Smith (1992) proposed the Geneplore model, which
provided a basic structure for the cognitive process and
then, based on this, explained the phenomena of creative
cognition. The Geneplore model consists of two distinct
processing components: generative processes and (following these) exploratory processes. In the generative
phase, one constructs mental representations called preinventive structures with various properties that promote
creative discovery. Generative processes such as
retrieval, association, mental synthesis, mental transformation, and analogical transfer may then give rise
to preinventive structures. These structures, which might
consist of mental images, verbal combinations, category
exemplars, or mental models, were then explored in
order to assess their creative possibilities. These preinventive structures could be seen as internal precursors
to the final, externalized creative products and, themselves, might be generated, regenerated, and modified
throughout the course of creative exploration. These
exploratory processes include attribute finding, conceptual interpretation, functional inference, hypothesis testing, and searching for limitations. This sort of model
assumes, of course, that once these exploratory processes are completed, the preinventive structure could
be still further refined or regenerated, depending on
what one has discovered during the exploratory phase.
According to the Geneplore model, then, and other
more recent models influenced by it, when people
engage in creative thinking they move through cyclic
(repeating) phases of generation and exploration. For
example, someone might retrieve two mental images
and combine them in the generation phase to produce
a visually interesting form, and then interpret this form
in terms of newly conceived ideas. The cycle may then be
repeated until the form (or structure) has been
developed to the desired extent. Further examination
of the form might lead to the conclusion that it is still
incomplete in some respects; by a further cyclic move,
a modified form may then be generated by retrieving
yet another image and mentally combining it with the
already existing one. The Geneplore model also
222 HORNG AND HU
considered constraints on the creative product and how
they affected the underlying cognitive processes.
CREATIVITY AND CULINARY ARTISTS
In the French culinary tradition, creativity was the
refinement of classical or traditional culinary arts
(Chossat & Gergaud, 2003). Top chefs always sought
opportunities to expand their knowledge about food.
Frumkin (2001) interviewed Paul Liebrandt, an awardwinning chef in New York, and found that this chef’s
passion for cooking came from the busy yet also free
and affectionate atmosphere in the kitchen. This was,
after all, an atmosphere conducive to sharing ideas with
others and acquiring new ideas as well as new techniques
virtually every day. Liebrandt’s creativity seemed to
come from his continuous learning, his willingness to listen to all the ideas and then select from them those
which he could use; in this way he was able to fashion
his own style, but only because he had a solid foundation in culinary knowledge and praxis. Just as in other
artistic domains, creativity-generation practices such as
brainstorming, or creating nouns or adjectives to
describe a series of unrelated products, have sometimes
been used, even by restaurants, to help cultivate innovativeness in chefs. Gazzoli (1995) suggested that a great
chef must combine this sort of individual artistic perspective with a constant focus on the needs of the customers; of course, the latter may also have an impact on
the artist’s creative experimentation. Thus, a crucial role
may be played by the environment of the workplace
itself (the kitchen, the restaurant), and even by the
profit-making pressures of the restaurant business, in
not only harnessing but also harboring and promoting
the culinary creativity of its stars.
Culinary artists have many possible sources of inspiration. An awareness of other cultures, experienced
through books and films or (better yet) through traveling abroad, plays a vital crucial role. On the more pragmatic level, customers’ feedback is obviously very
important, and this feedback will be partly or largely
influenced by the menus of other restaurants, the current vogue of various cultural or ethnic cuisines and,
more generally, the changing tastes of a given clientele,
society, or culture. Thus first-rate chefs actually need
to read extensively as part of their search for uncommon
recipes, foods, utensils, and cooking techniques. They
also need to discuss their ideas with other chefs, advertisers, and retailers: such discussions will clearly influence their creative process. Finally, they can also find
new ideas in art galleries, culinary schools, and other
such institutions. In all of these media of information
and sources of feedback, as in the culinary arts themselves, it is clear that fashion plays a significant role; this
is obviously also true of the musical, literary, visual, and
plastic arts. (Perhaps the culinary arts might be classified, along with sculpture, as plastic arts.) However, as
with the relation between artist and consumer(s) or artist and business, the interaction goes both ways: current
fashion has an impact on the artist and he or she has an
impact on current fashion, indeed (if creative enough) is
capable of initiating a new fashion.
METHOD
The researchers adopted a multidimensional, qualitative
research method. We used (a) in-depth interviews with
creative culinary artists, and (b) the content analysis of
international culinary contest records, information from
the Internet, and information about culinary schools.
Through the in-depth interviews, the researchers
attempted to understand complex patterns of behavior
without imposing any prior categorization that might
limit the field of inquiry (Fontana & Frey, 2000). After
the repeated reading, conceptualizing, coding, and compressing of information, a grounded theory was used to
analyze the data and to develop a descriptive model
ofthe developmental process of culinary creativity. This
grounded theory consisted of a set of systematic procedures for inductively deriving a theory about a particular phenomenon (Strauss & Corbin, 1997).
Concepts were then inductively derived from an
initial set of qualitative descriptions—in this case, transcripts of culinary artists discussing their culinary creativity process. When these were coded into
rudimentary categories, they led to the collection of
more descriptions. These initial descriptions, extracted
from the interview transcripts, could stand alone as
units of meaning that conveyed ideas. To guarantee
the project’s credibility, participants provided documents such as award certificates, news reports, photographs, and written autobiographies, so that the
researchers could conduct triangulation analysis.
Finally, the project’s validity was further reinforced by
the researchers’ reflection notes: These were reflections
on their research methodology, on the culinary creative
process uncovered through this research and on its
social and cultural implications.
Participants
In recent years, creativity has received more and more
emphasis in international culinary contests: Creativity
and presentation now account for 30% of the total
score. For this reason, and also because contest winners
and judges must obviously be very good at what they
do, many of the participants in this research project
were themselves winners of, and judges at, international
MYSTERY IN THE KITCHEN: CULINARY CREATIVITY 223
culinary competitions; all of them had an international
reputation. Of the 17 participants, 8 were Westerncuisine artists, among them the Dean of the College of
Culinary Arts of Johnson & Wales University and the
director, professors, and master chefs from The Culinary Institute of America; 6 were Chinese-cuisine artists,
among them chefs, professors (mentors), and students
(apprentices); and 3 were pastry specialists. They were
divided into three groups: C for Chinese cuisine, W
for Western cuisine, and B for pastry specialists. The letter and number following the C, W, or B is the codename assigned to each participant.
Procedure
Data were collected during a 6-month trip abroad, from
February to July, 2005, during which the researchers visited restaurants and schools. All interviews followed a
prescribed interview schedule to ensure that all of the
issues were discussed. Guaranteed confidentiality, the
culinary artists were told about the purpose of this project, and the interviews were conducted using semistructured, open-ended questions. This format allowed the
researchers to ask more precise and tailored questions
and also allowed individuals to be more expansive, providing illustrations, narratives, and examples to express
their insights. The interviews were conducted individually and typically lasted about 2 hr each. (Some lasted
3 hr.) Interviews were carried out at the respondents’
convenience, usually after they had finished their shift
in a restaurant or their class at school. Most were held
at the researchers’ onsite location or in a quiet area of
the subject’s workplace. Each interview included questions on: subjects’ individual backgrounds, strategies
used to create a culinary work, ways of obtaining ideas
for creative works, and factors influencing the creative
process. The interviews were audio-recorded and fully
transcribed. All respondents participated in the project
voluntarily; the interviewer gave them prior notice and
they were informed by their supervisors of the interviewer’s visit.
As stated in the Abstract, the researchers basically
presupposed Wallas’s 1926 creative-process model,
according to which creativity is a dynamic and evolving
cycle involving four phases: (a) idea preparation: collecting data and combining old experiences with new
knowledge; (b) idea incubation: idea selection, synthesis,
analogical transfer, and shelving or abandoning of old
or unrelated work; (c) idea development: finding common attributes, seeking illumination or inspiration, finding out how to solve key problems; (d) work
verification: evaluating concepts, techniques, and the
final product. Modifying this with certain aspects of
the Geneplore model (Finke et al., 1992), the researchers
then assumed at the outset a dynamic, interactive model
with multiple feedback loops, each of whose phases consisted of interactive subcomponents: Thus, new culinary
ideas might arise at any step in the process. The purpose
of the project was to explore the ways in which the concrete data supplied by our interviews with culinary
artists fit this model. See Figure 1, in which the bold
arrow represents creative culinary artists’ (developing)
store of culinary knowledge, upon which they naturally
draw when they set out to create a specific work.
Phase 1: Preparation for New Ideas
Some of our participants said that they began their
career by imitating others—that is, before developing
their own creativity. This is just like a toddler who learns
how to walk by imitating adults. But, like children, the
artists will soon learn how to play creative variations
on the styles they have learned to imitate.
Imitation is not that easy, but at least you can get a
rough idea from his work. I start to think in my own
way, but I still want to know what’s good about his
work, and why. Then, I present it in my own way. The
judges at international culinary contests like to see tradition reinterpreted in a new, creative fashion. (WF-138)
Whether through imitation of masters or by other
means, our creative artists had to collect and accumulate
knowledge, information, and skills to solve problems.
They needed to select and organize meaningful data so
as to develop their creative potential. Some of the subjects thought that an artist’s versatility, creativity, originality, and sophistication are all very important, as is
their ability to be inspired by what they see, touch, hear,
read, smell, and taste, for all of these experiences may be
turned into delicious dishes. Loving the food one creates
and serves seemed to be a fundamental principle echoed
by several interviewees; our artists tended to translate
their own love of food into a passion for sharing it with
their customers.
Classic cooking skill is fundamental in developing culinary creativity. (WK-002)
I pore over all of my notes and photos and search for
inspiration before a contest. (CC-1197)
I see new things every day in my life, and I keep all of
them, even the least obvious ones, in my memory bank.
(WJ-033)
The interviews suggested that creative culinary artists
were able to inject the concept of fashion into their culinary designs. For example, furniture design, handicrafts,
the style of kitchen utensils and home appliances, and
the like often gave them new ideas. Little things such
as soap dishes, tealeaf filters, and candle stands often
224 HORNG AND HU
stimulated them in unexpected ways. They also tended
to be inspired by customers’ likes and dislikes and their
changing tastes, and by the menus of other restaurants.
Moreover, they also felt that their reading and viewing
of pictures and films, as well as their travel and the
experience of other cultures afforded by it, were very
important.
I read cookbooks, but I don’t cook by the book. I add
my personal flavors into the dish. (WF-008)
I like reading. I go to the library to read foreign
magazines. I also watch contests. (WF-053)
I watch TV programs such as National Geographic
Channel; I read newspapers and magazines, and I like
to shop around. I am always doing correlation thinking.
(WF-119)
I like to window-shop in stores like Working House,
IKEA. Their products bring me many new ideas. I think
their products can be applied to culinary art as well.
(CF-036)
It might almost seem that creativity is, at least for these
artists, a characteristic of life itself, an expression of
one’s individuality and originality, as well as of one’s
interaction with one’s society and culture.
FIGURE 1 Circulation model of culinary creativity.
MYSTERY IN THE KITCHEN: CULINARY CREATIVITY 225
Phase 2: Idea Incubation
Some of our subjects said that once they had several
ideas to work (or play) with, they would begin with a
vague concept or feeling and move toward clarity
through the incubation of the idea. This may be the sort
of process that cognitive psychologists would analyze in
terms of retrieval and associative mechanisms, mental
synthesis and conceptual combination, mental transformation and analogical transfer. During this phase,
imagination might be more important than knowledge:
Using one’s imagination can lead to strategic solutions,
which involve dynamic, creative action-based decisionmaking processes that introduce new modes of thinking
(Ogilvie, 1998).
I let my imagination run wild. I first select certain general ideas and observe others’ works. (CB-045)
Later, I want to make the dish look Chinese, so I
think of Chinese calligraphy and classical Chinese musical instruments. One of my dishes is arranged like a
Koto. (CB-131)
The interviewees commonly said that a plethora of
ideas would tend to be generated in them by and from
a variety of sources; here cognitive retrieval and association seemed to play an important role. Indeed, the
researchers found that when creative culinary artists
appraise a work, they tend to observe the combination
of materials, the arrangement of the dish. That is, at this
stage it is apparently the precise mixture or combination
of the raw ‘‘mental ingredients’’ that is important, and
several subjects spoke of how they strove to integrate
the techniques of sculpture (the plastic arts) as well as
of Chinese, Western, and pastry cuisine into their works.
A particular dish or flavor might be recalled from memory and then reinterpreted during this incubation phase;
or, several words or objects might be retrieved and then
associated in novel ways, resulting in a new, more simple
structure or design for the projected dish. Typically,
these retrieval and associative processes happened
quickly and automatically, but sometimes it seems they
were inhibited, resulting in mental blocks and fixation
effects.
I think these foods should go well together. Corn and
milk make a very good combination. White chocolate
and cheese both have the flavor of milk. And this correlation forms the basis of my design. (WF-084)
White chocolate tastes like milk, and cheese tastes
like milk as well. We have to find their similarities.
Based on the similarities, we design our works and create new effects and tastes. (WF-083)
The second, incubation stage of Wallas’ (1926) model
involves, then, synthesis and transformation. Single
concepts can be combined to form more complex ones,
and the meanings of one or more of the initial concepts
can be altered as a result. The components of creative
culinary works can be mentally rearranged and reassembled, and forms can be rotated or otherwise altered
in shape to make interesting and potentially useful structures. This stage also involves the closely-related processes of analogical transfer and categorical reduction:
A relationship or set of relationships in one context gets
transferred to another, and thereby a new structure is
created.
Oftentimes, I will try to forget about Chinese cuisine for
a moment. I try to adapt Western cuisines or pastry cuisine. For example, I make small frozen custard balls and
cover them with flour paste, and then deep-fry them.
The custard balls become a Chinese dessert. I believe
that creativity is based upon imagination, logical thinking, and solid skills. (CF-012)
Objects or elements can also be reduced (via categorical reduction) to more primitive categorical descriptions. A creative culinary artist can, for example, use
the form of Chinese chess in the design of his or
her bread or chocolate sculptures. The interviewees
mostly agreed that any culinary artwork began as a
relatively unstructured concept, one which they found
difficult to describe. This of course resonates,
although perhaps on another level of discourse, with
traditional psychological, philosophical, and religious
notions of creation as an ‘‘ordering of chaos,’’ and
thus, too, with Laozi’s notion of the Dao as a ‘‘thing
confusedly formed (confusedly forming)’’ in Chapter
25 of the Daodejing (Laozi, 1958, p. 147).
Finally, in stage two it is often necessary to shelve or
abandon one’s previous ideas. A creative culinary idea
might be discarded if it does not look promising, of if
the artists were to find a better one. Shelving really
means merely postponing a potentially interesting culinary idea, which can still be brought back into play later
on. The artist can always return, in any case, to the first
phase and begin the whole cycle again in order to generate better solutions: after all, if the creative process is a
cycle, then this cycle may be repeated many times in
order to modify or expand ideas. Failure to develop a
viable (practicable) idea is also not uncommon,
especially at the beginning. However, a failed experiment need not mean real failure: the experimental design
of a main dish which failed could be recycled and
applied to the creation of side dishes. (Again, it seems
intuitively obvious that there is a similar process at work
in all artistic fields, in all areas of creativity including, as
the allusion to Laozi’s Dao above may suggest, cosmogonic generation.)
226 HORNG AND HU
Phase 3: Idea Development
Idea development is a complex process of structuring,
extending, and restructuring a particular culinary idea
by bringing a wide range of subcomponents into play.
A single idea for a culinary work might travel through
this cycle many times before moving to the next phase.
This phase includes the exploring of attributes, conceptual interpretation, functional inference, contextual
shifting, discussion and compromise, clarification, and
searching for limitations.
It is important to explore the emerging features (attributes) that result from conceptual combinations and
metaphorical conjunctions. The interviews suggested
that most inventive ideas came from considering ways
in which existing designs might be improved. This is
the process of creative refinement, where one begins
with a common design, mentally attaches to it or blends
with it a new shape or part, and then explores the functional implications of the resulting form. Thus the culinary artist, in creating a new dish, will naturally
(spontaneously) search for precreation structures from
which he or she can create unique designs.
I went to Working House, and I saw a cute shell-shaped
tea filter. It was so lovely, and I thought that if I could
make a fried bird’s nest into the shape of a shell, that
would be gorgeous. (CF-005)
Conceptual interpretation is the process of transforming abstract ideas and images into concrete concepts. One of the interviewees said that he would first
sketch out the overall framework of his ideas, and then
discuss it with his colleagues. During the discussion process, creative ideas became more concretized, which also
makes it easier to share them with others. This concretizing of ideas is a necessary step on the way to the
production of new forms.
I show my partner my ideas and drawings. If he thinks
my ideas are plausible, I will then take the next step. It
won’t be helpful if I don’t present abstract ideas in a
concrete way. We share the responsibility; we think
together and design the presentation together. (CD-049)
Idea development also depends upon functional
inference, the process of exploring the potential uses
or functions of an experimental structure. Creative culinary artists might imagine how a hypothetical objectform could be used as a particular tool, a piece of a
cooking pan, or the shape of a dish. This process, which
may depend on a kind Gestalt shift in one’s perception, a
sudden transformation of perspective, is often facilitated
by imagining oneself actually trying to use the object in
various ways.
I use cone-shaped containers to make Chinese dishes.
These containers were originally for baking, not Chinese
cuisine. However, I used the containers to make spring
rolls. The spring rolls were tiled with vegetable strips
and trimmed. I also used the containers to make wantons, which looked like candy. You’d never see this kind
of design anywhere else. (CF-007)
Thus, some interviewees thought that creative culinary artists liked to think about an experimental structure in new or different contexts as a way of gaining
insight into other possible uses or meanings of the structure. This process often helped them to overcome a certain tendency to become fixated on a single idea, form or
structure.
I tried to appreciate Matisse’ paintings, understanding
how he designed them. I imitated his design and created
my own work with sauce and food. My works are
unique. (WF-065)
Thus, teamwork may play an important role in this
third stage. As the saying goes, two heads are better
than one. Several subjects said that they liked to discuss
and exchange ideas and techniques with each other. In
this way, they stimulated one another’s creativity. After
analyzing the interviews, the researchers found that in
Taiwan some culinary artists still withhold certain skills,
being reluctant to teach their apprentices everything
they know. But what is needed is, on the contrary, the
freest exchange, the widest possible dissemination of
knowledge.
We brainstorm, stimulate each other. We try different
kinds of combinations and presentations. We are able
to create because we work together. There is chemistry
in our group. (WG-003)
If somebody has an idea for something, we will try it
out and talk about it. I think it’s a very good way for
everybody to learn, exchange information, and engage
in debate. I think it helps us to make progress. (WK-022)
Clarification or illumination is the process by which,
after idea preparation and incubation, and after various
problems have been discussed and (hopefully) solved,
the moment of insight comes. Perhaps this is the
moment of seeing the final solution to a problem or even
seeing the final form in a flash of insight, that is, as an
inner vision.
I saw the beautiful soap dish, and I thought I could put
it to use, to decorate dishes or something. I created different partitions to complete the design of my works.
(CF-071)
But the possibility of such a triumphant insight
always depends on the awareness of limitations. Some
MYSTERY IN THE KITCHEN: CULINARY CREATIVITY 227
interviewees stressed the importance of knowing which
ideas did or would not work, which kinds of solutions
were or would not be feasible, and why. This was generally thought to be just as important as actually discovering what worked. Knowing the possible range of one’s
projected creation, its possible limitations, helps to focus
creative exploration only in the most promising directions. Thus, artists rather often discover that their initial
creations, based on certain paradigms, are limited in
important respects; they might then begin to explore
these limitations, leading to the creation of more appropriate paradigms.
When we began to bake a cake, nothing was going very
well. We stumbled, and we suffered. We threw away
countless failed works. (BC-002)
When I need new ideas, I go to the National Palace
Museum, trying to add artistic ingredients into my pastry products. (BB-012)
Phase 4: Verification of Culinary Works
Few studies had claimed that idea evaluation might be
just as important as the initial process of idea generation
(Lonergan, Scott, & Mumford, 2004). It is one thing to
evaluate and reconsider one’s ideas, plans, or theoretical
designs during the ongoing creative process, and we saw
(and described above) various ways in which this may
occur in the first three stages. On the other hand, the
empirical evaluation of a completed work (dish) can
only occur after it has really been completed, and—
especially in the case of competitions—formally presented (to the judges and audience, to one’s family
seated at the dinner table) on a plate, in a bowl, or in
some other way. In order to properly evaluate, judge,
or ‘‘verify’’ his or her finished work. the culinary artist
must already have internalized the standards by which
the judges (or restaurant customers, or dinner guests)
will be judging it—unless, perhaps, the artist is so confident of his or her creativity and experimental genius that
he or she wishes to undertake a bold experiment, to
introduce new standards. In any case, what will be formally judged in a completed dish is, of course, its
harmonious combination of visual design(s), flavors,
tastes, and textures, the imaginativeness (perhaps
playfulness) of its conceptual design.
However, the artist can also check or evaluate empirically his or her work once it has achieved some sort of
material form, however early, elementary, or tentative
that form might be. This sort of verification then
becomes part of the experimental process of creating a
new and original culinary product. The classic and most
obvious case is the desire of a chef to taste his or her dish
to see how it is coming along before putting the final
touches on it. Here the question again arises as to
whether the artist needs to be always keeping in mind
the standard (already established) paradigm of perfection for a given dish—whatever this paradigm might
be—or always thinking, rather, how he or she wants
to modify that preexisting paradigm. Yet clearly both
strategies would seem to be required, and indeed it looks
like the top-level chefs who win contests are keeping
both in mind and constantly negotiating between them.
And if an artist deems his or her own work, at a particular (material) stage, not viable then he or she need
not necessarily destroy it; as with his or her ideas at earlier stages of the process, the artist might simply put it
into storage for later recycling. Through repeated
experiments that involve, as in physics or chemistry,
an interface of theoretical and material forms (ideas or
principles and physical objects), there is a constant move
toward perfection—however one might want to define
this term.
In some cases, how the artist thinks his or her (at this
point) completed dish tastes will also suggest how to
proceed to the further step of presentation, for once
the dish is actually completed, it still needs to be presented. (Here one might wonder what sort of analogies
exist in the other art-forms to this work=presentation
distinction, given that only in the culinary arts is the
presentation, in part, an inducement to the presumed
following step on the part of the ‘‘spectator’’—a very
physical form of ‘‘consumption.’’)
First I will taste the food, to get the flavor of it. Then, I
will think about how to present it. Making the presentation is not difficult; it’s relatively easy when the concept is established. (WK-004)
Creativity depends on having an innovative perspective. When you reinvent an old classic, you must keep
the integrity of the dish. ... The whole ingredients have
to make sense. (WJ-001)
Thus, in the culinary arts, as in all properly artistic
fields, repeated experiments will be undertaken by the
best artists, both at the purely mental (ideal, hypothetical) level in the earlier stages and at the mental-andempirical level at this fourth stage, in order to arrive
at the best possible use of the ingredients with which
he or she started out, the best possible combination of
aesthetic (gustatory, tactile, and visual) values. This
experimentation may also extend, naturally enough, into
the domain of other cultures, and into the mixing of one
culture with another, of one ethnic element with a quite
different one. Here the travel (as well as reading) experience of culinary artists is called upon.
I like to create an unprecedented flavor for customers,
such as a crispy taste in a soup. I continuously try to
combine Chinese and Western pastry cuisine. I want customers to have fun, playing while tasting. Customers
228 HORNG AND HU
have to poke through the brown crispy pastry covering
the bowl. When the pastry skin is broken and crumbling,
they will be surprised by what’s inside the soup. (CF-006)
Sometimes you think it won’t work, but you still
want to try because you have the idea and you want
to go further. (WK-003)
And it may be noted here, with regard to CF-006’s
comment above, that one aspect of presentation is the
fact that a completed dish can be touched as well as
seen, smelled and tasted by a consumer (diner, customer) or more formal kind of judge. That is, here the
tactile or haptic sense also comes into play, reminding
us once again that cuisine is, in one sense, a plastic
art-form analogous to the various forms or categories
of sculpture. On the other hand, just as touching sculptures in a museum or even statues in a park might have a
certain social or cultural taboo attached to it, actually
touching a sumptuous dish set before one on the
table—with anything other than an eating utensil—is
also considered, at least in some cultures of the world,
taboo. The haptic sense remains in this way closely tied
to, even an extension of, the visual sense. The presented
dish must be elegant, must be beautiful; this is a large
part of the reason why consumers are attracted to it,
why people desire to consume it; and yet this beauty,
itself, somehow includes gustatory, olfactory, and haptic
values, together with purely visual ones.
Artists present their ideas through music or paintings,
and we do it with our cuisine. We are more creative. I
was writing to a girl and my tears dropped onto the letter. So, I made a teardrop-shaped choux pastry as a
present for her. The ingredients included cheese, coco
powder, sugar powder. I put all my affection into the
product; I made the story of my love for her real. Like
Dewey said, emotions increase the depth of design. That
helps my work come to life. (CF1-124)
My work incorporates many sources of input: reading, art, life experience, culinary skills, famous cuisines,
culture, and the like. (CF-074)
A creative Chinese cuisine or creative pastry cuisine is
more like a science, but the process of preparation is
very artistic. It’s very enjoyable. (CF-102)
Hegarty and O’Mahony (2001) saidy that culinary
artists are like real artists; they apply special methods
to process food, giving it a serious aesthetic meaning
which (as with other arts) in certain respects goes
beyond the merely experiential meaning. Thus although
the science behind a culinary work might be seen as
combining physics, chemistry, and biology, culinary
creativity itself is a mixture of food science, art, and
culture. Gazzoli (1995) emphasized that each culture’s
cuisine remains an art synonymous with the soul of
that culture’s people. Furthermore, after repeated
experiments and modifications, the most creative culinary products tend to be the most complex and multifaceted. Here, again, there is the parallel with other works
of ‘‘fine art,’’ the higher art forms: Joyce’s Ulysses is
above all more complex than a simple child’s verse or
fable; Beethoven’s symphonies are more complex, generally speaking, than most kinds of popular music.
Thus, current culinary experimentation continues to
make use of new perspectives in order to create variations on older designs or forms. It also continues to
blend different cultural traditions, sometimes perhaps
even parodying them in the manner of postmodernism,
a term first used in the context of architecture that combined and parodied various old styles—for instance,
gothic, Romanesque, and baroque. In this sense, as
the interviews clearly suggest, culinary creativity is not
linear in its mode of development and homogeneous
but, on the contrary, nonlinear and heterogeneous. It
can combine techniques, cultures, and historical periods:
current American fast-food with traditional French or
Chinese cuisine, Northern European pastry cuisine with
Japanese food sculpture.
CONCLUSION
The creative culinary process was analyzed in this project
according to a slightly modified version of Wallas’s
(1926) 4-stage creative process model. Phase 1 (preparing
ideas) in the model explored here, for instance, is roughly
analogous to Wallas’ preparation stage and also to the
generative process of the Geneplore model proposed
by Finke et al (1992); our following three phases are
similarly congruent with those of Wallas, with some
refinement via the Geneplore model in terms of cognitive
subprocesses. One potentially important finding was
that—especially in the two middle stages, but even in
the first and final phases—our participants seemed to
feel that imagination played a more vital role than
preexisting knowledge. Nonetheless, of course, both are
necessary—the problem is how to combine them. The
culinary artists we interviewed also sought to achieve,
generally speaking, a balance between the traditional,
the currently fashionable, and their own radically new
ideas. Here fashion seems to occupy a middle ground
between tradition and experimentation: the new idea,
once it becomes the trend, quickly becomes old.
Imagination, then, played a prominent role in the
responses of several of our interviewees. They often
spoke of flashes of intuition or insight, whether one
wants to explain these by resorting to the notion of an
unconscious or more strictly in terms of cognitive psychology. Some interviewees did seem to have the sense
of an unconscious reworking of preexisting knowledge,
problems, and new ideas (or new solutions to old
MYSTERY IN THE KITCHEN: CULINARY CREATIVITY 229
problems) that goes on within the cyclic subprocesses,
especially in stages 2 and 3. Participants also tended to
emphasize creative thinking as a kind of divergent thinking: They felt that new insights were, to some degree,
made possible by Gestalt-switch-like shifts in perspective, sometimes aided by the experience of other cultures
and of the unusual cuisines of other cultures (Moss,
2002; Williams, 2004).
There was also a fair degree of emphasis on what
Mace and Ward (2002) called the shelving or abandoning
of an idea, or even of an artwork (dish), at its initial stage
of completion; the possibility of later ‘‘recycling’’ was
stressed by several of our artists. This willingness to suddenly discard or shelve an idea or preliminary product
(creation) when some new discovery suddenly appears
is also an important element of the Geneplore model,
with its elaboration of cyclic or self-returning subprocesses. There may be a close connection, as no doubt in
all artistic fields, between speculative questioning (wondering, investigating, experimenting), meta-cognition
(thinking about thinking), and this recycling of ideas.
Finally, the interviewees’ comments suggested, either
directly or indirectly, some ways in which the culinary
industry might improve culinary artists’ creativity and
competitiveness. The most important idea here seemed
to be the need for communication, not only between restaurant (and hotel) owners=managers and chefs but also
between diners (customers, consumers) and chefs—feedback is creative stimulant—and between and among the
chefs themselves. Clearly it was thought that culinary
artists can learn much from one another—perhaps even
more than from schools, books, and traveling, although
those too (especially travel, when one has already
achieved a certain level of expertise) are important—
and also can creatively stimulate one another in various
ways, partly through the healthy spirit of competition.
Another, related recurrent theme was that culinary
artists need to have enough free time away from their
jobs in order to practice their art freely, for pure enjoyment, as the best poets write poetry and the best musicians compose music. Still, competition is a good
inducement to creativity, but international contests tend
to be preferred to the job (the culinary industry in itself),
partly because of the relative degree of freedom attached
to such contests.
To return to the point mentioned at the beginning of
this article, cooking is the most vital of all arts inasmuch
as we need to eat in order to live. Beyond the mere level
of survival, then, this ‘‘vitality’’ gets infused into the
various aesthetic forms and dimensions of haute cuisine
that afford pleasure to the diner who eats the dish and
also—although in a somewhat different way—to the
culinary artist who creates it, even if he never himself
consumes it. However, when we commence to consider,
more deeply, the aesthetics of these mysterious arts of
the kitchen, it starts to become difficult, no doubt as
in all artistic media, although with an inevitable difference, to distinguish between the pleasure of its creator
in creating a dish, the pleasure of the spectator in consuming it, and the pure (freely-formed) beauty of the
creative work itself.