If there’s one thing the French are famous for, aside from their impeccable fashion sense, it has to be their cuisine. It might not be the trendiest of cooking styles, yet there’s a certain timelessness about it. A wine that was rated as tasty ten years ago, will still taste good today – well, of course, don’t leave that bottle open for a decade. And the recipe for a mouthwatering tartiflette hasn’t changed since its invention. With their sense of taste, it’s no wonder that the French often eat multiple-course meals every day and one dish can’t lack: the cheese platter.
Just like their wines, French cheeses are famous all around the world. Even if we haven’t got the data to support this statement, we’re pretty sure that France is one of the countries with the biggest number of different cheese varieties. And what’s even more stunning is the fact that most of those are actually a pleasure for your taste buds. This also means that when visiting a French supermarket or cheese shop, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the enormous amount of options. And it’s even easier to forget what you’ve actually bought from that adorable cheese vendor. Because once you’ve put all those yummy cheeses on your cheese platter, things start to get confusing.
Cheezam
In order to solve that problem – you know, the fact that you don’t know which cheese is which anymore – a new app has seen the day of light. It’s called Cheezam (get it?) and it’s supposed to recognise any kind of cheese with the help of one single picture. Which, admittedly, could be a very handy tool, especially if you’ve got guests coming over and you don’t want to lose face by not knowing what you’re serving them.
However, there’s one little problem. According to the guys at Konbini Food, the app doesn’t actually work that well just yet. Recognising your average Brie or Camembert shouldn’t be an issue but, honestly, we wouldn’t need an app for that. Once things start to be a little more complicated and once you start to pull out the lesser-known cheese varieties, however, the AI is significantly less accurate. Luckily, that can change. As the app depends largely on user contributions, it gets more intelligent with every picture or other piece of information you provide. Let’s hope that by summer – or the time we head over to France for a well-deserved cheese-filled break – Cheezam will be able to fulfil all our cheese-identification needs.
