The proof is in the pudding, or is it?

Cooking has suffered for centuries from one tiresome requirement: food must actually be cooked. This insistence on physical execution has held back culinary imagination, shackling gastronomic genius to such vulgar considerations as ingredients, kitchen equipment, temperature and, worst of all, whether anybody would eat the resulting dish. It's time to liberate cuisine from the kadhai. Welcome to theoretical cooking, a new discipline in which recipes are conceived, debated, peer-reviewed and awarded Michelin stars without ever approaching a stove. Much as theoretical physicists need not personally collide particles, theoretical chefs should not be expected to boil potatoes.

A theoretical biryani might contain 37 spices, 6 varieties of rice, and a philosophical objection to saffron. Its excellence would be judged not by taste or presentation, but by conceptual audacity, ingredient compatibility and sophistication of its accompanying explanatory notes. And master chefs could finally concentrate on what they do best: talking about food. Critics (read: gluttons) will complain that cuisine without eating is meaningless. But literature needn't be performed, architecture needn't be built, and economics seldom requires its theories to work. Theoretical cooking's greatest triumph? A perfectly satisfying meal that leaves everyone licking their lips.