Ingredients are related to other ingredients through different relationships: they appear together in a specific recipe; they are used in the same season, they come from a specific geographical region, etc.

The team conducted a Big Data analysis of the ingredients and recipes from elBulli and the results allowed them to create an ingredient network visualization application. In it, the main ingredient networks from elBulli and their usage are combined. The core ingredients of each recipe are also displayed.

The navigation of the App is intuitive and its visualisation is very appealing. It shows a network of elBulli’s most frequent ingredients, presented as circles, bigger or smaller depending on its relevance. By watching the graph connections, you can easily discover which ingredients combine most frequently. Depending on the thickness of the edge between two ingredients, you get information about how many recipes have been created with that specific ingredient combination.

You can also find all of elBulli’s recipes that contain a specific ingredient that appears in all of them.

This result was shown on several exhibitions of elBullifoundation around the world, including the one held in Espacio Fundación Telefonica.

We are currently working on taking this Big Data research approach further.