In recent years, the use of data-driven methods has provided insights into underlying patterns and principles behind culinary recipes. In this exploratory work, we introduce the use of topological data analysis, especially persistent homology, in order to study the space of culinary recipes. In particular, persistent homology analysis provides a set of recipes surrounding the multiscale "holes" in the space of existing recipes. We then propose a method to generate novel ingredient combinations using combinatorial optimization on this topological information. We made biscuits using the novel ingredient combinations, which were confirmed to be acceptable enough by a sensory evaluation study. Our findings indicate that topological data analysis has the potential for providing new tools and insights in the study of culinary recipes.

For a small inoffensive treat, Jaffa Cakes can cause a lot of debate. Should you eat it all in one or nibble off the edge before the jelly? These are questions asked in households across the UK, and while theses questions may always remain a mystery, McVitie's amazed fans in 2020 by putting an end to one debate. The Edinburgh-biscuit company revealed the chocolate is actually on the bottom of the Jaffa Cake, contrary to popular belief. In a screenshot of a Twitter conservation shared widely on UK Facebook groups, McVitie's appeared to have confirmed that chocolate is at the bottom of a Jaffa Cake UK social media user known as David claimed to have asked the Jaffa Cake team to confirm which side of the treat is the top via Facebook Messenger.

Identifying the causal variables of an environment and how to intervene on them is of core value in applications such as robotics and embodied AI. While an agent can commonly interact with the environment and may implicitly perturb the behavior of some of these causal variables, often the targets it affects remain unknown. In this paper, we show that causal variables can still be identified for many common setups, e.g., additive Gaussian noise models, if the agent's interactions with a causal variable can be described by an unknown binary variable. This happens when each causal variable has two different mechanisms, e.g., an observational and an interventional one. Using this identifiability result, we propose BISCUIT, a method for simultaneously learning causal variables and their corresponding binary interaction variables. On three robotic-inspired datasets, BISCUIT accurately identifies causal variables and can even be scaled to complex, realistic environments for embodied AI.

A physicist has used the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to solve the age-old debate about whether Jaffa Cakes are biscuits or cakes. Dr. Héloïse Stevance, an astrophysicist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, trained algorithms with nearly 100 recipes of traditional cakes and biscuits. She then ran two Jaffa Cakes recipes through the algorithms, which recognised them unambiguously as cakes'without a doubt'. Jaffa Cakes, which are made by Edinburgh-based manufacturer McVitie's, consist of a disc of orange-flavoured jelly, milk chocolate and a mysterious spongy base. But fans of the popular British snack have passionately debated whether they're biscuits or cakes due to their unique texture and appearance.

Before Brexit, one of the greatest causes of arguments amongst British families was the question of the nature of Jaffa Cakes. Some argue that their size and host environment (the biscuit aisle) should make them a biscuit in their own right. Others consider that their physical properties (e.g. they harden rather than soften on becoming stale) suggest that they are in fact cake. In order to finally put this debate to rest, we re-purpose technologies used to classify transient events. We train two classifiers (a Random Forest and a Support Vector Machine) on 100 recipes of traditional cakes and biscuits. Our classifiers have 95 percent and 91 percent accuracy respectively. Finally we feed two Jaffa Cake recipes to the algorithms and find that Jaffa Cakes are, without a doubt, cakes. Finally, we suggest a new theory as to why some believe Jaffa Cakes are biscuits.

Among Ron Grantham's happiest memories are the days he spent fly-fishing with his beloved dog, Spot. Now those memories are being revived by visits from his new best friend, Biscuit - a robotic dog. Grantham is 99 years old and lives in Templeman House, a British care home, which brought in Biscuit. Staff there say dogs - even robotic dogs - can help to elicit memories from residents and spark conversations with care providers. Staff at Templeman House, a British care home, say dogs can help to elicit memories from residents and spark conversations with care providers. 'I found out today that Ron used to go fly fishing when he finished work and take the dog across the fields with him while he fished,' said Deanna Barnes, home manager at care home, told Reuters.

The debate over which biscuit is best for dunking normally comes down to a matter of personal taste. But the more practical question of which can soak up the most tea without crumbling into the cup has been subjected to the more exacting scrutiny of science. Ten types of biscuit, ranging from Fortnum & Mason pistachio and clotted cream to children's favourite Fox's Party Rings, were dunked to see how long each lasted before losing'structural integrity' – science speak for how long before they crumbled. In a separate test, the amount of tea each could absorb in 15 seconds was measured. The winner was the McVitie's Rich Tea with nine points out of a maximum ten – holding together for an impressive ten minutes before starting to disintegrate, according to Wired.