he newest cookbook on the market was compiled by a chef who "has never tasted a single morsel of food", the book's introduction points out. "This culinary prodigy, in fact, has no taste buds, no nose, not any sensual experience of food or drink."

This could be the world's first collection of recipes created by artificial intelligence.

Watson, IBM's cognitive system that famously defeated two human grand champions to win the US quiz show Jeopardy, has turned its attention to the kitchen.

• Alimentary, my dear Watson: can a supercomputer rival human chefs?

For several years, the virtual chef has been poring over troves of recipes and food-related data, from classic meal combinations to research on flavour preferences and the chemical composition of foods.

The computer was programmed to produce ideas for food combinations that would taste pleasant at a molecular level and that, crucially, had not yet been tried.