Can’t figure out what to have for dinner? Hugo Liu, a graduate student at M.I.T.’s Media Lab, has developed a “smart” cookbook that can recommend a dish on the basis of some of the tastes and emotions commonly associated with it.

Synesthetic Recipes, a searchable computer database of 60,000 recipes, can’t actually read your mind, but it comes close. In the manner of a conventional cookbook, it is indexed according to 5,000 ingredients and 400 cooking procedures. But it can also be searched according to terms that range from the descriptive (“silky”) and the playful (“aha”) to the referential (“Popeye”) and the temperamental (“brooding”). Looking for something that’s “exotic” and “melodic” and “citrusy”? The cookbook suggests barbecued pork ribs with a currant glaze or jackfruit pudding.

Read the whole article on the Synesthetic Cookbook, at The New York Times