Chennai-based software engineer Krish Ashok prefers to bring to the table an unnatural ingredient: science. "Most recipes require you to weigh proportions and follow specific instructions. Nobody actually weighs ingredients. I'm always trying to bring in some amount of engineering into this process to create a standard template, which one can follow to concoct their own recipe," he says. A product of this engineering is The Amaklamatic Chutney Recipe Generator — a Google excel sheet that allows you to choose ingredients at home to create a recipe based on the same. Although Ashok created it last year, another techie found it and refined the interface recently, turning it into a handy lockdown tool to innovate with what's available in the pantry.

"The idea was to have a database of ingredients — raw materials like carrots; items that need to be cooked like eggplants; a nutty element like peanuts or urad; herbs; salts; acids like vinegar or orange juice; and some sort of tempering. There's a growing list of choices for these categories that one can select to generate a recipe," he shares. However, he admits that a randomly generated recipe may not always work. "The idea is to inspire people with the ingredient list, get them to pick the right one with practice and give them new ideas," says the techie who is working on similar generators as prep for a book on food science.