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Paper short abstract

Human navigation of digital foodscapes is strongly facilitated by algorithms. No Kitchen Is an Island treats digital recipes as more-than-human assemblages, where climate data and user input co-steer culinary evolution, exploring how algorithmic conformity can support sustainable food futures.

Paper long abstract

As culinary practices of home cooks become increasingly hybrid, mediated by algorithms and expanded through globalized ingredient flows, recipes can no longer be understood as static documentation or culinary heritage artifacts. Rather, it is methodologically useful to view them as organisms that mutate, adapt, and are hardwired to disseminate. Drawing on food-related assemblage thinking in New Materialism (Bennett, 2020; Mol, 2021), this paper reframes digital recipes as evolving assemblages of More-than-Human (MtH) actors, including ingredients, microbes, cooks, supply chains, climate conditions, search rankings, recommendation systems, and platform architects.

The platform No Kitchen Is an Island (NKI) explores how algorithmic mediation can amplify MtH perspectives within everyday cooking practices. It features average recipes derived from the most searched-for dishes in Germany over the past five years. Each recipe was calculated from the top 10 search results and represents statistical consensus—a computationally mediated form of taste.

In addition to user-generated comments, the NKI comment section features automatically synthesized comments based on recent local climate and environmental news. Each week, these MtH comments are incorporated into a revised recipe version, placing human needs and algorithmically mediated ecological signals on equal footing in steering recipe evolution.

Digital infrastructures already shape everyday nutrition. NKI seeks to redistribute agency within the adaptation processes our culinary practices undergo. We conceptualize recipes as assemblages that are negotiated between consumer choice and planetary boundaries, and ask how algorithmic conformity might be used to foster less anthropocentric and more sustainable food futures.

NKI: https://nokitchenisanisland.com/