The Cuciniale system is a coordinated combination of hardware (GourmetSensor) and iOS app (GourmetPilot).
At first glance, the sensor looks like a somewhat larger meat thermometer. At first, its shape reminded me a bit of the Range, smart thermometer that I helped fund on Kickstarter and whose first production is scheduled to ship early next year.
However, the functions of Cuciniale and the underlying technical as well as scientific underpinnings, go far beyond anything I have seen to date in this direction….
During the product premiere, I not only had the opportunity to have Holger Henke, founder and CEO, and his partner Philipp Ochtendung, CTO, explain the system to me at length – we also cooked. And it does so in an exciting setting. Two dishes were prepared by the participants with intensive use of Cuciniale. In parallel and with identical products, the WDR chef Patrick Jabs cooked in a second kitchen. Afterwards, we tasted together at the table and tried to recognize which products were cooked by the professional. Not all guests managed to guess correctly, especially for the second course, the duck, the odds were 50:50. Of course, that was just a hook to get into the conversation together and discover the differences. We had a fun and extremely informative evening in a small but nice group, in the by the way very cozy and perfectly suitable for such events Schlemmerschule.
Can anyone really cook like a pro now? Probably not, but it seems that Cuciniale is indeed a very useful technical helper, perhaps even the start of a whole new category of intelligent kitchen coaches. A market for it is certainly there. Moreover, there is a lot of intelligence in the system in any case. For example, the GourmetSensor can not only detect the temperature, there are many more sensors. The water, fat and protein content is constantly checked and transmitted to the app via Bluetooth 4.0 protocol. As a result, the software not only knows the current state of the food, it can also use stored algorithms to decide how best to continue cooking in order to achieve the desired (and set) result. A very important aspect is the constant readjustment of the temperature. When using the GourmetSensor for the first time, the stove must therefore also be configured so that the app can decide at which level which stove plate must be operated.
The app(GourmetPilot) is currently only available for iOS devices, but an Android variant is already in development. The software could not yet convince as much as the hardware, but that is not a problem because it can be constantly updated and improved by feedback from the first real users. Due to the many data that are constantly emitted from the GourmetSensor, many more functions are certainly conceivable…
I’m very excited to see how this project develops and I’m looking forward to experimenting with a test device in my own kitchen soon.
