Research

What are recipes? How do they work? Why do they work? And what do they do?

These questions drive the RELISH project. We will generate a better understanding of the link between recipes and culture, and why they should be understood as part of Europe’s cultural heritage.

Across eight workpackages, we will produce several digital and cultural tools to understand the impact recipes have in our lives and on heritage. 

RELISH will reframe collective understandings of food culture and its importance in education, integrate a legal framework regarding recipes as intellectual property, develop future scenarios for EU culinary heritage, and design a culinary map to visualise current EU foodways. 

Work Packages

Work Package “Ingredients” will design surveys and digital models to produce a present-day culinary map of Europe shaped by the experiences of mobile and young generations.

Work Package Lead

Joan Ribas, Fundació Alícia

In collaboration with: University of Milan, University of Gastronomic Sciences, and Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon

Dates: January 2025 – April 2026

Objectives
  • To design a survey on the food practices of European youth to predict future European food and recipe scenarios. 
  • To collect data on digitised traditional EU recipes and their sustainability impact to support developing a digital recipe visualisation tool.
  • To build mediation models between culinary tradition and modern living through historical recipes, connections between food traditions, food culture, storytelling, and education.

Work Package “Prepping” will guide all partners on the design, development, and testing of a data-driven web platform through a theoretical approach to the question: What is a recipe?

Work Package Lead

Andrea Borghini, University of Milan

In collaboration with: Institut LYFE, City University of London, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, University of Gastronomic Sciences, University College Cork, Fundació Alícia, Durham University, Atlantic Technological University, Roskilde University, and Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon

Dates: September 2025 – March 2027

Objectives
  • To establish the theoretical and practical framework from which RELISH operates when dealing with existing research and information related to culinary cultural heritage.
  • To support technical partners in the consortium from a cultural heritage perspective in identifying key questions and cultural assumptions that are relevant for RELISH.
  • To assist partners in the development of key terms for analysis in RELISH-organized culinary cultural activities.
  • To identify and engage institutional stakeholders in promoting culinary cultural heritage across local, national and EU levels.

Work Package “Cooking” will develop methodological approaches and analytical frameworks exploring recipes through concepts of agency and mobility from interdisciplinary perspectives. 

Work Package Lead

Simone Cinotto, University of Gastronomic Sciences

In collaboration with: Fundació Alícia, University College Cork, Durham University, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, and Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon

Dates: January 2026 – June 2027

Objectives
  • To position Europe’s culinary heritage in recipes as accessible, powerful and flexible tools that mediate and facilitate current and future challenges to food and heritage in Europe
  • To create a methodological and analytical framework to explore recipes based on concepts of mobility, interdisciplinarity and agency
  • To develop and share a prototype to digitally visualise mobility and agency that underpin the creation and evolution of recipes, and to explore issues connected to social and environmental sustainability 

Work Package “Tasting” will conduct interviews and workshops with food professionals to test digital recipe visualisation tools, expand the RELISH platform’s user base and analyze the role of IP and AI in recipe creation.

Work Package Lead

Enrico Bonadio, City University of London

In collaboration with: Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon)

Dates: April 2026 – September 2027

Objectives
  • To test the applications developed for the RELISH platform by expanding its user base to include food system professionals and solicit user feedback.
  • To explore Intellectual Property (IP) and sustainability issues related to recipes as enhancing competition in food industry sectors or to support or hinder sustainable food systems transformations.
  • To run a pilot of culinary cultural activities as storytelling to integrate in the RELISH platform
  • To prepare legal frameworks and reports toward improving  digital and AI-powered tools and their applications for culinary heritage and food industry professionals.

Work Package “Simmering” will lever user-centred methods to design and develop the RELISH platform. These efforts will start with five proof-of-concept use cases that illustrate a range of platform applications.

Work Package Lead

Augusto Esteves, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon

Dates: April 2025 – June 2026

Objectives
  • Design and develop the RELISH web platform—a scalable repository of data, dashboards and models—that facilitates access to information produced and gathered throughout the project.
  • Demonstrate and iterate the capabilities and features of the platform via five disparate use cases with consortium partners.

Work Package “Cooling Down” will integrate user-centred methods and spatial computing into the RELISH platform, as well as test two additional proof-of-concept use cases and their potential applications. 

Work Package Lead

Augusto Esteves, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon

Dates: July 2026 – September 2027

Objectives
  • Integrate into the RELISH web platform our repository of data, dashboards and models that will facilitate access to the information produced and gathered throughout the project. 
  • Continue to demonstrate and apply the capabilities and features of the platform via two additional use cases with consortium partners.
  • Mobilize a community around the platform so it continues to grow after the project has been completed. 

Work Package “Plating” will collect a repository of data generated by all RELISH work packages and prepare a final review of the future applications and scenarios on culinary heritage and recipe tranformation in the EU.

Work Package Lead

Enric Bas, FUTURLAB (University of Alicante)

In collaboration with: Durham University, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon

Dates: July 2026 – December 2027

Objectives
  • To project Future Scenarios for Recipes as cultural heritage tools applicable for approaching EU cultural heritage and Green Deal strategies.
  • To identify narratives of change through recipes as cultural heritage using a UX approach.
  • To create recommendations for policymakers, educators, and cultural institutions on how to use EU recipes to empower and promote inclusion in future generations through Speculative Design integrated in the RELISH digital platform. 

Work Package “Serving” will communicate and share activities, events, and updates on the RELISH project across social media, websites, and publications to connect with stakeholders and interest groups. 

Work Package Lead

H. Rosi Song, Durham University

Dates: January 2025 – December 2027

Objectives
  • To share the project’s approach, activities, and results with key stakeholders and interest groups
  • To ensure the future uptake and use of the project’s results during and after the project 
  • To handle Intellectual Property (IP) issues, as well as the dissemination of guidelines, recommendations and research produced by RELISH, for EU policymakers, businesses, associations, other stakeholders, and the general EU public