Shintaro Tamefusa built a rig that makes a cold croquette appear piping hot: as he pulls it apart with both hands, he steps on a foot pump and sends smoke through a tube behind the food.
Smoke from a smoke machine is stored in a sealed container and pushed through the tube by the foot pump. When he compared the effect with an actually heated croquette, the real one was painfully hot but produced barely visible steam, while the cold croquette with added smoke looked much hotter.
Instead of heating the food, the machine adds only the visual evidence of heat. Somehow the cold croquette ends up looking hotter than the real hot one.
The Fully Automated Motomura Shichimi Sorting Machine separates the chili peppers from shichimi, a Japanese seven-spice blend, to produce ichimi, or single-spice chili pepper seasoning. It is designed to sort different types of ingredients.
The machine also incorporates Pockét YUZAN, a large language model that predicts the comments of Kaibara Yuzan, a gourmet character from the manga Oishinbo. Its creators, the five-member group Bishoku Club, work on recreating the labor-intensive food preparation depicted in the manga using modern technology.
See the Motomura Shichimi sorting machine section in the linked report.
Turning seven-spice seasoning back into one-spice seasoning is already a lot of work. This machine also asks AI to predict what a famously demanding gourmet would say about the result. The preparation is becoming an epic undertaking.
Instead of heating the food, the machine adds only the visual evidence of heat. Somehow the cold croquette ends up looking hotter than the real hot one.