Identifying substitute ingredients using a natural language processing system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9971737-B2
Application number	US-201615199698-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 30, 2016
Priority date	Jan 29, 2016
Publication date	May 15, 2018
Grant date	May 15, 2018

Abstract

A first food ingredient may be received. The first food ingredient may comprise a first plurality of chemical constituents. A plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes may be received. Each candidate food ingredient substitute may comprise a second plurality of chemical constituents. For each of the plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes, a quantity of the second plurality of chemical constituents that match the first plurality of chemical constituents may be determined. One or more food ingredient substitutes may be identified based on at least the quantity of the second plurality of chemical constituents that match the first plurality of chemical constituents.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system for identifying substitutes for ingredients in a recipe based on analyzing chemical association, the system comprising:
a computing device having a processor; and
a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by the processor to cause the system to:
obtain, by a natural language processing (NLP) computing system, a first set of preexisting recipes;
generate, by the NLP computing system and in response to the receiving of the preexisting recipes, a second set of new recipes based on at least a machine learning associated with the first set of preexisting recipes;
receive, by the NLP computing system, a first food ingredient in response to the generating of the second set of new recipes, the first food ingredient comprising a first plurality of chemical constituents;
receive, by the NLP computing system, a plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes, each candidate food ingredient substitute comprising a second plurality of chemical constituents;
determine, by the NLP computing system and for each of the plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes, a quantity of the second plurality of chemical constituents that match the first plurality of chemical constituents, the match being based on a chemical structure similarity between the second plurality of chemical constituents and the first plurality of chemical constituents; and
identify, by the NLP computing system, one or more food ingredient substitutes based on at least the quantity of the second plurality of chemical constituents that match the first plurality of chemical constituents.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the program instructions executable by the processor further cause the system to:
rank each of the plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes based on the determining; and
generate, in response to the ranking, a first set of recipes, wherein each recipe of the first set includes the one or more food ingredient substitutes.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes includes a second food ingredient and a third food ingredient, and wherein the program instructions executable by the processor to cause the system to determine includes:
determining that the second food ingredient shares a higher quantity of chemical molecules with the first food ingredient than the third food ingredient shares with the first food ingredient; and
ranking the second food ingredient as a higher candidate for substitution than the third food ingredient, wherein the one or more food ingredient substitutes includes the second food ingredient but not the third food ingredient.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the program instructions executable by the processor further cause the system to group the first food ingredient into a particular food type class, wherein the receiving of the plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes is based on the particular food type class that the first food ingredient is in.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the program instructions executable by the processor to cause the system to identify one or more food ingredient substitutes includes:
ranking each of the plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes based on at least comparing a first texture description of each of the plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes with a second texture description of the first food ingredient; and
generating, in response to at least the ranking, a first set of recipes that includes the one or more food ingredient substitutes.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the program instructions executable by the processor further cause the system to:
determine a third plurality of chemical constituents of the first food ingredient as it exists before the first food ingredient is cooked;
determine a fourth plurality of chemical constituents of the first food ingredient as it exists after the first food ingredient is cooked;
compare the third plurality of chemical constituents with the fourth plurality of chemical constituents;
determine, based on the comparing, that the fourth plurality of chemical constituents differs from the third plurality of chemical constituents above a threshold; and
assign the fourth plurality of chemical constituents to be the first plurality of chemical constituents.

7. A computer program product for identifying substitutes for ingredients in a recipe based on analyzing chemical association, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having program code embodied therewith, the program code comprising computer readable program code, the computer readable program code being configured for:
receiving, by a natural language processing (NLP) computing system, a first food ingredient, the first food ingredient comprising a first plurality of chemical constituents;
receiving, by the NLP computing system, a plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes, each candidate food ingredient substitute comprising a second plurality of chemical constituents;
determining, by the NLP computing system and for each of the plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes, a quantity of the second plurality of chemical constituents that match the first plurality of chemical constituents, the match being based on at least measuring an amount structural overlap between the second plurality of chemical constituents and the first plurality of chemical constituents; and
identifying, by the NLP computing system, one or more food ingredient substitutes based on at least the quantity of the second plurality of chemical constituents that match the first plurality of chemical constituents.

8. The computer program product of claim 7 , wherein the computer readable program code is further configured for:
obtaining, prior to the receiving of the first food ingredient, a first set of preexisting recipes; and
generating, by the natural language processing (NLP) module and prior to the receiving of the first food ingredient, a second set of new recipes based on at least a content of the first set of preexisting recipes, wherein the receiving of the first food ingredient is in response to the obtaining and generating, wherein the NLP module includes at least a tokenizer and a syntactic relationship identifier.

9. The computer program product of claim 7 , wherein the computer readable program code is further configured for:
ranking each of the plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes based on the determining; and
generating, in response to the ranking, a first set of recipes, wherein each recipe of the first set includes the one or more food ingredient substitutes.

10. The computer program product of claim 7 , wherein the plurality of candidate food ingredient substitutes includes a second food ingredient and a third food ingredient, and wherein the determining includes:
determining, via a jaccard index, that the second food ingredient shares a higher quantity of chemical molecules with the first food ingredient than the third food ingredient shares with the first food ingredient; and
ranking, based on a result of the jaccard index, the second food ingredient as a higher candidate for substitution than the third food ingredient, wherein the one or more food ingredient substitutes includes the second food ingredient but not the third food ingredient.

11. The computer program product of claim 7 , wherein the computer readable program code is further configured for grouping the first food ingredient into a particular food type class, wherein the receiving of the plurality of candidate food ingre

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Pinel Florian
• Seabolt Edward E

Classifications

• G06F40/295

  Named entity recognition · CPC title

• G06F16/34

  Browsing; Visualisation therefor (browsing or visualisation for clustering or classification G06F16/358) · CPC title

• G06F40/30

  Semantic analysis · CPC title

• G06F40/166

  Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting · CPC title

• G06F40/40

  Processing or translation of natural language (natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30) · CPC title