What is “grilled cheese”? Most of us probably have a specific idea come to mind – for me, it’s Pepperidge Farm white bread and Kraft American cheese, griddled in butter (how my mom made it, of course).
That’s just my own preference – a general definition of grilled cheese might be: cheese between bread, cooked until the bread is toasty and the cheese is melty.
By riffing on this simple formula, the creative possibilities start to unfold. Indeed, the New York Times Cooking site has thirteen recipes for “grilled cheese” that are recognizable twists on our general definition. There are variations on technique (sheet pan, air fryer, grill), type of cheese (cheddar, American, muenster), and extra ingredients (kimchi, sweet potato, onions).
These thirteen recipes are just the tip of the iceberg, each variation sparks others. A kimchi grilled cheese suggests the existence of a sauerkraut grilled cheese. The french onion grilled cheese points to other soup-inspired sandwiches…how about broccoli-cheddar grilled cheese? The toum grilled cheese, incorporating the Lebanese condiment, reminds us there are hundreds of cuisines that might be able to cast their flavors and ingredients onto the blank canvas of grilled cheese. There must be thousands of grilled cheeses, maybe more!
As cooks, how can we see all those possibilities? For most of us, this skill develops slowly over time through study, observation, and trial and error. Even with experience, it's easy to fall into ruts and miss the opportunity for a creative twist or convenient modification. What if we had tools at hand to help spark our creativity? Instead of finding one grilled cheese recipe, or even thirteen, is there a way for us to navigate through the space where thousands of grilled cheese sandwiches exist to find one that's right for this moment?
As an enthusiastic home cook and a curious software developer, I’ve been working on ways to apply generative artificial intelligence to this challenge. In the course of this project, which I've dubbed Flavorful, I've come to see how generative AI can be a lens for exploration. Rather than replacing human creativity, it can be deployed as a collaborative tool that helps us see the familiar in a new way. With this perspective all our recipes, even the simple grilled cheese, become an invitation to play.