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Article

Unveiling the Essence of Gastronomy: A Data-Driven Exploration of Culinary Expertise in the Nordic Region

by
Cheryl Marie Cordeiro
1,* and
Nataliya Berbyuk Lindström
2
1
Division of Bioeconomy and Health, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, 43153 Mölndal, Sweden
2
Institution for Applied Information Technology, University of Gothenburg, 40530 Göteborg, Sweden
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Gastronomy 2024, 2(4), 215-232; https://doi.org/10.3390/gastronomy2040015
Submission received: 7 August 2024 / Revised: 19 September 2024 / Accepted: 2 December 2024 / Published: 6 December 2024
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers in Gastronomic Sciences and Studies)
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Abstract

The science of gastronomy is a context-sensitive and qualitative application of human knowledge. While qualitative content analysis is a widely recognized research method, it is time-consuming, and its results heavily depend on the analyst’s expertise. This study addresses these challenges by employing automated content analysis (ACA), including tools like VOSViewer and AntConc, alongside qualitative methods from systemic functional linguistics (SFL). By analyzing 25 interviews with various professionals in gastronomy, the research aims to reduce subjectivity in interpreting data and uncover the essence of being a gastronomic chef. The findings highlight the complexity of a chef’s role, emphasizing creativity, collaboration, and innovation as key factors in delivering exceptional service and crafting the ultimate dining experience. Understanding a chef’s knowledge is crucial for enhancing service quality and comprehending consumer behavior, which is vital for service development.

1. Introduction

The field of gastronomy science is a qualitative reservoir of human knowledge that is context-specific in its practice. To uncover chef experiences and knowledge, the qualitative content analysis method has been empirically established for investigating context-sensitive information [1,2,3]. When performed manually, content analysis is a laborious process, with the quality of results depending heavily on the analyst’s expertise [1]. According to Schutz and Luckmann [4], ethnomethodological reflexivity in everyday life has interpretational relevance, but in science, it has thematic relevance. Many research designs and findings involve the researcher’s perspective, and in some contexts, researcher reflexivity is highly valued. However, qualitative methods often make it difficult to distinguish between interpretational reflexivity and thematic reflexivity [5,6]. While interpretational reflexive knowledge is valuable for providing insights into the workings of the world, there are contexts where data-driven findings would be more beneficial [7,8].
This study aims to uncover the essence of being a gastronomic chef by applying automated content analysis (ACA), including word concordance analysis using AntConc software [9,10] combined with manual systemic functional linguistic analysis (SFL) [11,12]. Empirical corpus data, consisting of semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, chefs, business owners, and restaurant and cafe managers in the Nordic region—including Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Norway, and Sweden—focuses on what it means to be a gastronomic chef. All interviews were conducted in 2023 at a Nordic seafood conference and trade fair held in Norway. The nature of this paper is methodological. A “corpus” (the singular form of “corpora”) is a substantial and structured set of machine-readable texts used for linguistic analysis and language study. This collection can encompass various forms of texts, including literary works, speeches, or journalistic articles. A corpus can be used as a tool for empirical investigation into language usage in authentic contexts. It facilitates the examination of language frequency patterns, diachronic linguistic changes, or the distinct linguistic characteristics of diverse demographic groups.
Corpora can be classified into different categories based on their content and purpose. Some are composed of a heterogeneous mix of text types, some focus on a specific linguistic variety (such as a particular dialect or subject area), and others consist of identical texts translated into various languages. Each type of corpus serves a unique role in linguistic research. This study also visualizes its findings through a network visualizer, VOSViewer [13,14,15], to illustrate the complexity of the interrelations of different elements of the essence of being a chef. Current research in gastronomy and information science has primarily focused on customers [16,17,18,19], how tourists’ perceptions of local food quality influence their dining satisfaction and subsequent behavioral intentions in the context of sustainable gastronomy tourism [20,21,22], developing online services, and how TV cooking programs influence consumer behavior in the restaurant market [23,24]. At this moment, studies on the essence of gastronomy and the behaviors of people working in restaurants remain under-researched [25,26,27]. This study contributes insights into the perceptions of the essence of chef work, essential for ensuring superior service quality and understanding consumer behavior choices, which is pivotal for service development. To this end, this paper addresses the following research question (RQ): What is the essence of being a gastronomic chef in the Nordic region?
The structure of the paper is as follows: It begins with an introduction that underscores the significance of comprehending the essence of being a gastronomic chef and the necessity for a data-driven method to achieve this understanding. The authors suggest employing automated content analysis (ACA) and systemic functional linguistic analysis (SFL) as tools to scrutinize semi-structured interviews conducted with various professionals in the gastronomy field in the Nordic region. The research questions that the paper seeks to answer are also presented in this section.
A literature review follows the introduction. This section offers a synopsis of the existing knowledge in the field of gastronomy and chef’s work, emphasizing the intricacies of the gastronomy field and the role of chefs as innovators and collaborators. The methods of ACA and SFL are introduced, explaining their relevance and application in the study. Next, the methodology section delineates the process of data collection, including the selection of interviewees and the ethical considerations adhered to during the study. It also details how the interviews were conducted and transcribed. The subsequent section presents the findings of the ACA and SFL analysis, visualized through VOSViewer. It discusses the most salient themes and clusters identified in the interviews, with a focus on the word “chef” and its context.
In the discussion section, the findings are interpreted, highlighting the insights gained about the essence of being a chef. The usefulness of the ACA and SFL methods in providing data-driven findings and the implications of these findings for the field of gastronomy are discussed.
Finally, the paper concludes with a section on study limitations and future research. This section acknowledges the study’s limitations, such as the small size of the corpus and the geographical focus on the Nordic region. It suggests future research directions, including the use of larger corpora and the inclusion of other countries to enable cross-cultural analysis.

2. Literature Review

Gastronomy refers to the knowledge and understanding of all things related to a person eating, using the best food possible [28,29,30]. As the art and science of good cooking, gastronomy necessarily considers the network of elements that comprise the complex agri-food system [31]. Gastronomy is a knowledge-intensive field because its potential for innovation is embedded in, if not shared with, the complexity of the agri-food system. Properties that can be attributed to complex systems include (i) individuality, where systems are multileveled and driven by the decentralized interaction of autonomous individual parts; (ii) heterogeneity, expressed in the diversity of the entities, actors, and stakeholders involved; (iii) interdependence, where elements across different levels and subsystems are interrelated and collaborative towards the development of the system; (iv) emergence, continuously evolving in nature; and (v) nonlinearity, where the outcomes of the system are influenced by the various environments it encompasses and in which it operates [32,33].
The challenge of gastronomy as a field lies both in its audio-visual outputs of delectable dishes to consumers in restaurants and in bringing the dining experience to the consumer as something novel and memorable [34,35], so that consumers will want to continue exploring innovative foods beyond their restaurant or gourmet dining experiences [28,36]. While documented knowledge within the field of gastronomy, in the form of cookbooks, video instructions, and recipes, is readily accessible, the process of creating an exceptional gourmet dining experience—from culinary kitchen to dining table—could be said to lie within a combined set of skills that includes leveraging tacit knowledge, defined as knowledge that is not documented or made explicit [37,38]. Furthermore, by fostering an inclusive, cross-knowledge-sharing corporate culture, culinary kitchens become collaborative arenas and workspaces that encourage innovation [39], product development [40], idea generation, adaptation, and innovation [41,42,43].

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Data Collection and Participants

To build a corpus, a total of 25 semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, chefs, business owners, and restaurant/café managers in the Nordic region were conducted in 2023, focusing on their experiences and perspectives on what it means to be and work as a chef. The interview guide is presented in Table 1 below.
The respondents were purposively selected based on their professional work experience in the food industry. The interviews were conducted in English. English is widely spoken in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and it is a common language for international trade fairs. However, language proficiency could have influenced how respondents expressed complex ideas, especially around nuanced concepts related to creativity and cultural practices. Subtle nuances and specific emotions might not have been as clearly conveyed as they would have been in the respondents’ native languages, potentially leading to less depth in some responses or slight misunderstandings in interpretation. The advantage of using English, however, is that a common language made data processing more accessible and consistent for broader academic dissemination and analysis. The interviews lasted between 45 and 60 min, and the respondents were encouraged to elaborate freely on the topic. The research adhered to the ethical guidelines of the Swedish Research Council [44] and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) [45]. These are comprehensive legal frameworks that govern the collection, processing, and protection of personal data within Sweden and the European Union. All identifying information was removed from the transcripts. The interviews were transcribed in accordance with the Gothenburg Transcription Standard (GTS) [46]. The transcribed texts formed a corpus of about 80,000 word tokens, which meets the criteria for a small, specialized corpus, with a size ranging between 20,000 and 200,000 words [47,48].

3.2. Data Analysis

3.2.1. Bibliometrics and Corpus Linguistics: Automated Content Analysis (ACA)

Bibliometric analysis offers mapping and clustering techniques frequently used in the analysis of networks such as documents and journals [49,50], helping to identify the main lines of research [51]. This analysis helps uncover knowledge structures that are not explicitly organized, offering visualization through tools like VOSviewer [13,14]. Bibliometric analysis is primarily used in various fields for literature reviews, analyzing the strength of correlations between topics and cross-citations, enabling the identification of salient research topics and the highlighting of research frontiers [49,50,52]. Currently, limited research is available on the applicability of bibliometrics in the analysis of qualitative data [53], such as interviews and narratives, which is the focus of this study.
Pieces of word concordance software, such as AntConc, used in this study, have been extensively applied in corpus linguistics and contribute to enhanced qualitative data analysis by facilitating keyword-in-context (KWIC) searches. This allows researcher subjectivities and reflexive knowledge to be considered in relation to language use. A KWIC analysis uncovers not only what respondents say but also how they discuss the subject [54]. Thus, the combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques in corpus linguistics provides a powerful tool for conducting content analysis, responding to the need for a more data-driven approach [55,56]. While most corpus-based studies use large corpora with billions of word tokens, studies have also been conducted using small to medium-sized corpora for understanding topic modeling and co-word mapping [57] and for identifying automatic multilingual stopwords from very small corpora, even up to a single text document, for natural language processing work [48].

3.2.2. Systemic Functional Linguistics: Manual Qualitative Analysis

Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) was developed during the 1990s and early 2000s as a grammar for text analysis [58,59]. Broadly, SFL is defined as a meta-linguistic theory and framework for describing and analyzing language, in which the functional use of language refers to the way people use language as a social semiotic resource [60]. SFL posits that language functions at different levels to make meaning in specific contexts, aligning with its focus on how language operates within various social and cultural environments. It is particularly concerned with the relationship between language form and function, systematically breaking down language into systems that represent meaning (semantic) choices and their structural realizations (syntactic). SFL has proven to be a particularly rigorous (data-driven) framework for text linguistic analysis, especially for scholars in the field of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), who are particularly interested in investigating structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power, and control as manifested in language [61].
SFL has been applied in a variety of contexts, including media articles, political discourse [62], pedagogy [63], and scientific discourse [64]. Its tripartite structure of metafunctions—textual, interpersonal, and experiential—serves as a key framework for analyzing how language not only conveys information but also constructs social relationships and organizes experience. SFL uses language as both a tool and a medium through which meanings are created and expressed [12]. Language simultaneously expresses three lines of meaning, or metafunctions, that help us interact with the world, as presented in Table 2 below.
The experiential metafunction deals with how the world is represented through language, encompassing logic, thoughts, emotions, and attitudes. The interpersonal metafunction positions identities and relationships within communicative discourse, enabling perspectives to be formed. The textual metafunction indicates the structural relationships of texts and how cohesively a text flows in argumentation [12].
Of the three strands of meaning, and for the specific purposes of this study, the SFL analysis focuses on the transitivity processes of the experiential (material and mental processes) and interpersonal (mood/modality) metafunctions. Specifically, it concentrates on material actions and mental processes—the acts of doing and thinking—relevant to the discussions in relation to the case study, such as the nature of a chef’s work:
  • Material (Ma) processes refer to actions and processes of doing, such as (to run) is running, (to sing) is singing, (to bake) is baking, (to cook) is cooking, etc.
  • Mental (Me) processes refer to thoughts, experiences, and feelings, such as to think, to feel, to be angry, happy, etc.
  • Modality (Mo) is realized by linguistic devices that indicate degrees of probability, likelihood, and obligation, expressed in words such as can, might, should, could, must, will, and shall; in some cases, these words are combined with not.
Figure 1 summarizes and illustrates the progression of research methods used for this study.
First, the specialized corpus focusing on chef narratives was analyzed using VOSviewer and AntConc applications, followed by SFL manual qualitative analysis. Both VOSviewer and AntConc use natural language processing techniques for data mining and data visualization. However, they differ in their purpose and use. While VOSviewer is most often used for visualizing bibliometric networks, it can also be applied to broader network analysis or to analyze co-occurrences between items or keywords [15,65]. The result of this analysis is a visualization of the most salient themes in the corpus, presented in word clusters. The stronger the co-occurrence links, the larger the visual node.
The corpus analysis toolkit AntConc offers several quantitative and qualitative functions, including word frequency counts, word collocations, and concordances. AntConc also facilitates qualitative content analysis through keyword-in-context (KWIC) searches. KWIC searches help identify how words are used in context within the corpus by the respondents, enabling the exploration of not only what the respondents talk about when they discuss a chef’s work, but also how they discuss their experiences, uncovering material actions and mental processes as they speak. Using both VOSviewer and AntConc can also be viewed as a means of triangulating ACA methods, where clusters of keywords can be identified rigorously and systematically. In using VOSviewer, selected program defaults were used unless specific reasons were chosen otherwise [13]. Finally, ACA analysis is complemented by applying a KWIC manual analysis of transitivity processes from the framework of SFL. As mentioned above, this study will focus on three functions of language expressed in material and mental processes, as well as modalities [12].

4. Findings and Discussion

Below, the VOSviewer findings are presented, followed by AntConc word frequency, keyword-in-context (KWIC), and SFL findings.

4.1. VOSviewer Findings

Of the 5894 terms, 78 met the threshold. For each of the 78 items, a relevance score or saliency score was calculated. In using VOSviewer, the choice of parameters was aligned with other literature, and the selected defaults were used unless otherwise specified [66]. The minimum number of occurrences of a term was set to 15. Based on this score, the most salient terms were selected, with the default choice being to select 60% of the most salient terms. Figure 2 is the VOSviewer visualization of the results of the co-occurrences in salient themes. In illustrating 26 items organized into three clusters (Table 3), VOSviewer was useful in uncovering data-driven underlying patterns of word co-occurrences, structuring the underlying body of information in the corpus into explicit salient themes and clusters.
VOSviewer is a bibliometric cluster analysis software, and the way it visualizes data depends on the strength of co-occurrences between terms. Words like “business”, “opportunity”, “challenge”, and “recipe” may belong to Cluster 2 in Table 3, but their strength of connection in Figure 2 may not be visually prominent because VOSviewer prioritizes salient co-occurrences for visual clarity. This can result in some terms not being as clearly visible or placed differently in the figure.
Moreover, VOSviewer uses various counting methods to construct bibliometric networks. The full counting method assigns full weight to every co-occurrence, while the fractional counting method distributes weights based on the relative strength of connections. Depending on the method chosen, this can affect the visualization. In Figure 2, the visualization uses fractional counting, where clusters reflect stronger ties between certain terms, while weaker connections, such as “business” and “recipe”, might be less visible. If a user expands or zooms into the VOSviewer visualization, more words from Cluster 2 would appear connected to Cluster 3, but this would require scaling beyond what is typically shown in a standard figure for print purposes. Thus, Table 3 offers a more detailed breakdown of the clusters, whereas Figure 2 presents a simplified visual representation, emphasizing the most prominent connections.
The corpus dataset is viewed as unstructured information within which specific knowledge lies. VOSviewer serves as a first-stage tool for corpus data management and sorting, making knowledge explicit through its clustering function, which highlights salient themes within the corpus. Table 3 and Figure 2 illustrate the central role of a chef in gastronomy. The findings indicate four characteristics of being a chef. Cluster 1 shows the linking of “chef” to physical places such as a restaurant, kitchen, and home. Terms such as cooking, science, dish, passion, experience, and creativity from Clusters 1 and 2 indicate the creativity and knowledge involved in a chef’s work. Cluster 3 illustrates the business nature of being a chef, including words such as product, company, business, and opportunity. The association of a chef’s work with family, home, and one’s country indicates the cultural belongingness of a chef’s role.
Based on the VOSviewer clusterings of salient themes in the corpus, the following section applies concordance software, AntConc, to delve deeper into both quantitative and qualitative content analysis. This analysis leverages researcher reflexive knowledge and subjectivities but remains primarily data-driven.

4.2. AntConc Word Frequency, Keyword-in-Context (KWIC), and SFL Findings

Following the saliency of the VOSviewer clusterings and the aim of this study, the word “chef” was identified as the most connected word within the corpus, a significant finding highlighted in Table 3. This lexical item was selected for in-depth analysis using AntConc and SFL frameworks.
The table in Figure 3 presents concordance plots that map out the frequency distribution of the word “chef” across multiple transcript files. A total of 188 concordance hits were found for the word “chef”, distributed over 18 of the 25 available transcripts. Each line in the table represents a transcription file, with vertical lines in each plot indicating occurrences of the word “chef” within those transcripts. The thickness of the lines is proportional to the frequency of the word’s usage; hence, denser or bolder sections reflect higher word frequency.
For instance, Plot 1 (Transcription 21a) contains 19 instances of the word “chef”, relatively spread out across the entire document (8253 characters long). This contrasts with Plot 4 (Transcription 24a), which shows a much higher frequency with 26 hits (spread over 8132 characters), concentrated primarily towards the beginning of the transcript. This suggests that in certain interviews or contexts, the discussion around the role or concept of a “chef” may be more prominent early on.
In other transcripts, such as Plot 7 (Transcription 4a), only two hits for the word “chef” are found, signifying less focus on the word in that particular file, while Plot 3 shows 16 hits distributed more evenly, pointing to a balanced but still meaningful reference throughout the conversation.
Complementing the visual data from Figure 3, Figure 4 offers further linguistic insights through AntConc’s concordance analysis, where the word “chef” is displayed in a three-left sorted keyword-in-context (KWIC) format. In this sorting method, the concordance results are organized based on the three words directly preceding the keyword “chef”. This allows for a detailed examination of recurring lexical patterns, or collocational structures, revealing frequent constructions such as “as a chef” or “trained as chef”. The first 20 lines of concordance in Figure 4 focus predominantly on the semantic and social roles associated with the professional identity of a “chef”, with co-text emphasizing notions of creativity, innovation, and professional practices. This sorting not only aids in identifying common collocations but also enhances the understanding of how “chef” is framed syntactically across the corpus. Such a granular exploration allows for a deeper understanding of how “chef” is thematically contextualized in relation to its surrounding linguistic environment.
The combined use of tools for analysis provides both quantitative (frequency of occurrence) and qualitative (contextual relevance) insights into how the term “chef” is deployed across different transcripts, helping elucidate the significance of the term in relation to the broader linguistic and thematic clusters emerging from the study.
Following the AntConc indications of transcripts that contain a dense focus on the word “chef”, this study applies a keyword-in-context search for the word “chef” for plots that have the highest retrieval hits. Applying a KWIC search, this study found that the word “chef” was used in two broad ways. The first was an individual speaking about a chef they knew in the third person, “He believes a chef must understand the guest and how they think” (Table 4, Transcript 24a). The second was the individual as a chef who spoke of themselves and their inspirations in the first person, “I believe that food is emotional and something that should be shared” (Table 5, Transcript 13a). Encompassed within the individual chef in first-person reflection, chefs not only speak of what and how they work, but who they work with. Applying a KWIC search, this study found that the word “chef” was used in two broad ways as presented below.
Table 4 and Table 5 illustrate a deeper analysis using AntConc KWIC for the word “chef”, exemplifying qualitative coding in SFL traditions. The narrative in Transcript 24a presents a speaker in awe of a chef and the chef’s diverse knowledge, ranging from culinary history and management of the culinary team to demonstrable skills in gastronomy, brought to the kitchen and the restaurant for the guests. The semantic nesting of material and mental processes surrounding the word “chef” in Transcript 24a complements the VOSviewer clusterings. Collocative words such as experience, understanding, operations, focusing, working, thinking, evolving, and developing—embodied and enacted in specific culinary arenas such as kitchens (lines 17 and 19) and restaurants (line 21)—underscore the chef’s creative essence, emphasizing hands-on experience as a central part of their work. Additionally, words like explaining, talking, teaching, and demonstrating indicate that being a chef involves contact with others, demonstrating competence and skills, serving customers, and teaching junior staff. In contrast, business owners and managers tend to focus on profitability and team management, as indicated in Transcript 24a. While chefs reflect on creativity and guest satisfaction, business owners and managers emphasize the importance of team cohesion and operational efficiency, ensuring that the restaurant functions smoothly. Collocations like team turnover and managing staff (lines 17–19) highlight the managerial priorities that focus more on the sustainability of operations rather than on the creative process itself.
Additionally, entrepreneurs in the gastronomy field may emphasize innovation and market trends, seeking to differentiate their offerings in a competitive landscape. This entrepreneurial mindset is reflected in Transcript 13a, where the chef experiments with creative techniques and unique ingredients, like charcoal and squid, to push the boundaries of traditional cuisine (lines 13–18). Such innovations not only showcase culinary creativity but also align with market-driven strategies to meet evolving consumer preferences.
Transcript 13a also conveys how demanding a chef’s profession can be, expressed using high modalities in combination with material and mental processes. The word “must” in lines such as “a chef must understand the guest and how they think, they must see the whole picture, the whole experience, and only then can they truly please the guest” indicates a high degree of obligation for the chef to fulfill if they want to deliver the ultimate dining experience to the guest. Addressing the research question posed in this study, it is evident in both tables that the chef often acts not only as a key actor and driver of cohesion within the culinary team and staff—”he believes a team must grow together and share knowledge amongst themselves” (Transcript 24a, lines 17–18)—but also in relation to the guest, “but for the team too, a head chef must earn their staff’s respect by treating them fairly and dedicating time to teaching them” (Transcript 24a, lines 23–24).
There are many combinations of mental and material processes that express the various knowledge dimensions (believing, knowing, explaining, experiencing, developing, evolving, etc.) and multifaceted roles filled by a single chef, from culinary creator and restaurant/team manager to teacher and provider of excellent gastronomy services to guests. In gastronomy, dining experiences are made memorable by the chef’s personalization of the dining event, combined with their personality as expressed through the dining event. This self-reflection and building a dining event around the chef’s personality is illustrated in Table 5, Transcript 13a.
The semantic nesting of mental and material processes in Table 5, Transcript 13a, contains expressions of individual passion, creativity, innovation, product, recipe, dish, experience, and the science of cooking. These items are also reflected mainly in Clusters 2 and 3 in the VOSviewer data visualization results (Table 3, Figure 2). A common denominator between Table 4 and Table 5, whether a chef is spoken of in the third person or the first person, is the science behind the job, the structure of the organization of knowledge, and the intense need to share this knowledge. Chefs embody a strong sense of purpose and belief in themselves and in what they do. Table 5 presents the following: “I believe food is emotional/and something that should be shared/not just the food itself, but the intention of every creation is meant to be shared.” Speaking in the first person, Table 5 contains more mental processes that reflect the creativity and creation processes of the planned gastronomic experience. Passion, science, and product innovation can be found in both mental and material processes, expressed in Table 5 with phrases such as believe, want to, makes you remember, brings the whole dish to life, nothing can be replaced with that burning flavor from the charcoal, ultimate dish.
Because gastronomy is a highly creative field, Table 5 gives an overview of how one chef, through a series of self-reflexive questions, makes tacit knowledge conscious, based on their own past experiences of consuming a dish. Self-reflexive questions were used by the chef in Table 5 to start their creative process of developing a new product, “what makes you remember it/is it the squid itself or is it the combination of the squid and the piquillo pepper/or is it…” (lines 7 to 10). This constant questioning and re-perspectivation of their own experiences of a food product seem to help bring to consciousness the tacit properties of culinary knowledge.
This process finally lands on a eureka moment, expressed in the use of high modalities combined with adverbs and adjectives that emphasize the properties of the new culinary dish: “nothing can be replaced with that burning flavor from the charcoal… if I want to have an ultimate dish… that’s where I start to really work on it… [to] serve burning charcoal with the fried charcoal dough” (lines 9 to 12). Table 5 also reveals the use of high modality words such as “every creation is meant to be shared” (Line 1) and “nothing can be replaced with that burning flavor from the charcoal” (Line 9) and adjectives such as “whole dish” and “ultimate dish”.
While the chef is highly skilled, knowledgeable, and a key actor in creating memorable dining experiences, they often work in consortium with a culinary team and suppliers. Table 6 from Transcript 31a illustrates how a chef can draw inspiration from a farmer who supplies quality vegetable produce.
Leveraging the farmer’s tacit (undocumented, contextual) knowledge of growing and supplying pristine vegetables, such as carrots, the chef collaborates with the farmer to bring out the best flavors of the produce using well-chosen cooking techniques, such as a basic grill with a pinch of salt (Table 6, line 17). The passion that the chef embodies towards his work is now viewed from the perspective of the farmer, whom the chef sees as a fellow artisan dedicated to his craft in producing quality produce. The farmer’s passion is expressed by the chef through mental and material process words, combined with high modality (high obligation) words, such as “they spend months/maybe every day/they go flip the vegetable” (lines 2 to 3), “it takes so much care for every produce/and they’re so proud of it” (lines 4 to 5), and “they want to make sure they deliver all the way/from the moment it grows until the end” (lines 10 to 11).

5. Conclusions

This study aimed to investigate and explore the essence of being a chef using a corpus-driven approach. Indeed, the chef emerged as the foremost key actor in gastronomy, as uncovered through the VOSviewer analysis. This finding aligns with other studies in gastronomy and culinary science, including those on plating design [67,68] and collaboration in promoting healthy eating within the food system [69,70]. AntConc proved useful in providing data-driven findings by indicating which interview texts contained the greatest number of hits for the word “chef”. The concordance feature of AntConc also allowed us to study how the word “chef” was used in context, complementing VOSviewer findings. By identifying the interview text with the highest number of hits for the word “chef”, based on a quantified sum of occurrences (rather than researcher subjectivity and intuition), relevant text was identified for a deeper KWIC analysis via SFL. Using KWIC via AntConc on the word “chef” revealed three ways in which “chef” was used in context: (i) in the first person (the chef who is self-reflecting and talking about others he/she works with), (ii) in the third person (someone else talking about a chef), and (iii) in a network of relations with suppliers and customers.
Further exploring the data, in-depth manual SFL analysis provided a more granular picture of the different types of knowledge and skills that a gastronomy chef possesses. Applying SFL, this study focused on three linguistic elements [12]: actions and processes of doing (material (Ma)); thinking, feelings, and experiences (mental (Me) processes); and probability, likelihood, and obligations (modality (Mo)). The analysis showed the complexity of being a chef, the different roles one takes on as a chef, and the demanding nature of a chef’s work. The concordances and coding clearly indicate a high degree of the chef’s obligation to create an ultimate dining experience for the guest, which can be achieved by fostering strong cohesion between the culinary team and staff. This finding highlights the importance of teamwork, leadership, and mutual respect in creating memorable dining experiences, which lies at the heart of gastronomy [71]. While these findings align with previous research that identifies chefs as innovators [71,72,73], this study extends previous research by emphasizing the inspirational and collaborative nature of a chef’s work, both in inspiring others and being inspired by others. The ability to work with suppliers and a culinary team appears to be a means of accessing and expanding a chef’s set of skills and knowledge base. Additionally, critical self-reflection, known in the field of culinary science and gastronomy as a means of providing excellent gastronomy services, is crucial for shaping policies that influence gastronomic activities such as tourism [21,74]. A chef’s different roles require the use and application of various types of knowledge, necessitating both a creative flow and structured processes, such as team management or restaurant management [71,75]. The study also indicates that being a chef encompasses being an educator, sharing explicit knowledge when teaching others, as well as leveraging implicit knowledge, such as a memory of a food experience that they wish to recreate for their guests [41,76,77].

Study Limitations and Future Research

Research on theoretical guidelines for combining ACA with qualitative research methods [78] is scarce. In a growing field of research methods bolstered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, this study has illustrated, though in limited examples, how ACA can enable and enhance data-driven qualitative research findings. However, the credibility of self-reported statements remains a challenge in social research, as respondents may shape their responses to construct a particular self-image. While this limitation is acknowledged, the use of SFL, combined with tools like VOSviewer and AntConc, serves to quantify qualitative data and reduce researcher bias, as the findings are data-driven rather than based purely on subjective interpretation. Still, the extent to which verbal declarations translate into real actions, or whether they reflect idealized perceptions, is difficult to verify, a limitation commonly encountered in qualitative research. The findings of this study are also necessarily bounded by the types of software chosen for illustrating ACA, where discussions of ACA constructs such as machine learning by vectors or naïve Bayes classifiers remain outside the scope of this work [79,80]. Additionally, the relatively small corpus and limited number of respondents restrict the generalizability of the findings.
Potential future avenues of research include developing an ACA research agenda across various disciplines, employing larger corpora that contribute to both the methodological development and a theoretical framework for the consistent application of ACA. Future work could also establish a literary canon reflecting the diverse ways ACA can be applied in different methodologies and software applications.
In addition to expanding on the methodological development of ACA and its integration with qualitative research methods, future research could benefit from exploring cross-cultural comparisons. Specifically, investigating how the essence of being a chef might vary across different countries—such as Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Norway, and Sweden—could provide deeper insights into local culinary traditions, cultural values, and economic contexts. Such a comparative analysis would enrich the current understanding of gastronomy by revealing how geographic and cultural influences shape the professional identity of chefs.
This direction could also involve a larger, more diverse corpus that captures these regional nuances, allowing for a more comprehensive analysis of the linguistic and thematic patterns that emerge across different Nordic countries. By doing so, future studies would contribute not only to the theoretical framework for ACA but also to the broader field of culinary and cultural studies. Moreover, the integration of cross-cultural elements would align with the growing interdisciplinary focus on understanding how local and global forces interact in the professionalization of gastronomy.

Author Contributions

Based on CRediT taxonomy, the authors acknowledge the following contributions: conceptualization, C.M.C. and N.B.L.; data curation, C.M.C.; formal analysis, C.M.C. and N.B.L.; investigation, C.M.C. and N.B.L.; methodology, C.M.C. and N.B.L.; software, C.M.C.; supervision, N.B.L.; validation, C.M.C. and N.B.L.; visualization, C.M.C. and N.B.L.; writing—original draft, C.M.C.; writing—review and editing, C.M.C. and N.B.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Ethical review and approval were waived for this study. The study did not involve identifiable personal data, sensitive information, or direct interventions with participants According to the document “General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Swedish Ethical Review Act (2003:460)”, the article does not require ethical approval.

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in this study for interview purposes. Subjects were anonymized to secure the privacy of individuals.

Data Availability Statement

Data are available from the authors upon request.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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Gastronomy 02 00015 g001
Figure 1. Research method progression.
Figure 1. Research method progression.
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Figure 2. VOSviewer visualization of the co-occurrences. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 correspond to Cluster 1, Cluster 2 and Cluster 3 in Table 3.
Figure 2. VOSviewer visualization of the co-occurrences. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 correspond to Cluster 1, Cluster 2 and Cluster 3 in Table 3.
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Figure 3. AntConc concordance plot screenshot for the word “chef”.
Figure 3. AntConc concordance plot screenshot for the word “chef”.
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Figure 4. AntConc concordance screenshot for the word “chef”.
Figure 4. AntConc concordance screenshot for the word “chef”.
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Table 1. Interview open-ended question guide.
Table 1. Interview open-ended question guide.
Interview QuestionsProbes
How did you get into the field of gastronomy?Childhood memories of food?/Favorite dishes from home? Other factors?
What does being a chef in gastronomy mean to you?Work tasks? Creativity? Team members? Management? Suppliers?
What makes for a memorable dining experience from the chef’s perspective?Elements?/Restaurant ambiance? Culture? Other?
Table 2. Three lines of meaning in the clause (12) p.83.
Table 2. Three lines of meaning in the clause (12) p.83.
MetafunctionClause as…SystemStructure
TextualMessageTHEMETheme ^ Rheme
InterpersonalExchangeMOODMood [Subject + Finate] + Residue [Predicator(+Complement)(+Adjunct)]
ExperientialRepresentationTRANSITIVITYProcess + participant(s) (+circumstances) e.g., Process+Actor + Goal
Table 3. VOSviewer item clusters.
Table 3. VOSviewer item clusters.
Cluster 1Cluster 2Cluster 3
chefcreativityinnovation
restaurantcookingproduct
cookhistorycompany
dishjobcountry
elementpassionfamily
experiencesciencefuture
kitchenvegetablehome
bookbusiness
opportunity
challenge
recipe
Table 4. Transcript 24a. Chef in third person and in relation to the guest (others).
Table 4. Transcript 24a. Chef in third person and in relation to the guest (others).
Key to Lowercase
Ma = Material process (acting, doing)
Me = Mental process (thinking, feeling, experiencing)
Mo = Modality (degree of probability or obligation)
Line
1$S: he told me how all his experiencesMe have givenMa him
2an all-round understandingMe of how a restaurant works/both in terms of
3operationsMa/and as an experienceMe for the guest/he believesMe a chef mustMo
4understandMe the guest and how they thinkMe/they mustMo see the whole picture
5/the whole experienceMe/and only then canMo they truly pleaseMe the guest/i
6was captivatedMe by his knowledgeMe of culinary history/he began talkingMa
7about the origins of the modern restaurant/and explainedMa how restaurants
8such as < name of restaurant >/establishedMa in 1582/laidMa the foundations for
9restaurants today in terms of structure/operations and dynamics/he
10explainedMa how as chefs have become more popularisedMa in the media/and the
11focus has turnedMe more to the food/and the chef’s style rather than the overall
12experience//many chefs now have too much self-importance/and putMa their
13own desires and preferencesMe above that of the guest’s pleasure/[there are]
14too many chefs these days that are workingMa for themselves/to developMa a cv
15that looks like a who’s who of the restaurant industry/rather than focusingMe on
16learning/contributingMe to the team and pleasingMa the guest/he went on to
17talkMa about the importance of greater teamwork in the kitchen/he believesMe a
18team mustMo growMa together and shareMa knowledgeMe amongst themselves/
19staff turnoverMa in kitchens is generally too high/and this impactsMa the operation
20/for him the role of a head chef is as a cook/a manager/and a teacher/
21responsible not onlyMo for the evolutionMa of the food and restaurant/but of the
22team too/a head chef mustMo earn their staff’s respect by treating them fairlyMa
23/and dedicatingMa time to teachingMa them/it is also important for the head chef
24to demonstrateMa a range of skills that he then teachesMa his staff
Table 5. Transcript 13a. Chef as first person.
Table 5. Transcript 13a. Chef as first person.
Key to Lowercase
Ma = Material process (acting, doing)
Me = Mental process (thinking, feeling, experiencing)
Mo = Modality (degree of probability or obligation)
Line
1$S: i believeMe food is emotionalMe/and something that shouldMo be shared/notMo
2just food itself but the intention of every creationMo is meantMo to be shared/it’s kind
3of a traditional fine dining sequence/that happensMa in the main course//i spentMa
4most of my time in the south of france/[and in the] mediterranean i wantedMe to
5createMa that really classic mediterranean spanish dish//you have a charcoal grill
6squid with piquillo smoked pepper and olive oil/a very simple dish/when i was
7thinkingMe of the dish/what makesMa you rememberMe it/is it the squid itself or is it
8the combination of the squid and the piquillo pepper/or is it that smokiness in the
9pepper/it’s that burning edge that bringsMa the whole dish to life/nothing can beMo
10replaced with that burning flavour from the charcoal/so what about if i want to
11haveMe an ultimateMo dish/that i justMo eatMa the charcoal/and that’s where i start
12toMa really workMa on it/and we makeMa fried charcoal dough//we serveMa burning
13charcoal with the friend charcoal dough/and then we serve a piquillo dip with the
14charcoal squid
Table 6. Transcript 13a. Chef in relation to farmers (other actors).
Table 6. Transcript 13a. Chef in relation to farmers (other actors).
Key to Lowercase
Ma = Material process (acting, doing)
Me = Mental process (thinking, feeling, experiencing)
Mo = Modality (degree of probability or obligation)
Line
1$S: you know one thing that strikesMaMe me is a chef/we neverMo thinkMe about what
2the farmer thinksMe/they spendMa months/maybeMo everydayMo/they go flipMa the
3vegetable/they giveMa them water/they takeMa care of it/they sayMa ok/the
4weather is not good/and then we coverMa it with something//it takesMa so much
5care for every produce/and they’re so proudMe of it/and what we doMa is/today i’m
6going to doMaMo a carrot jelly/and i just buyMa the carrot/the bestMo carrot i can getMa
7/and i just squeezeMa them into juice/and i makeMa a jelly/so everything’sMo gone/
8allMo the work is goneMa/and we neverMo thoughtMe about it as a chef because of our
9ego/because we’re so selfish/we thinkMe that i knowMe how to handleMa it/but we
10neverMo thinkMe of it in a perspective of an artisan/that they wantMe to deliverMa/
11they’re so proudMe of their produce/and they wantMe to make sureMe they deliverMa
12all the way/from the moment that it growsMa until the end/that it can beMo servedMa
13perfectly//so that gaveMa me an ideaMe/that everyMo day and everyMo menu that i
14serveMa/i wantMe to have one dish that doesn’tMo belong to me/i wantMe to have one
15dish that’s dedicatedMa to the artisan/so i wantMe them to tellMe me how they wantMe
16to cookMa it/how i canMo deliverMa the bestMo out of it/if he said that i’m going toMo
17grillMa it and then giveMa a pinch of salt/then that will beMo my foundation/i willMo
18seeMe how i canMo deliverMa the way that he wantsMa to
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MDPI and ACS Style

Cordeiro, C.M.; Lindström, N.B. Unveiling the Essence of Gastronomy: A Data-Driven Exploration of Culinary Expertise in the Nordic Region. Gastronomy 2024, 2, 215-232. https://doi.org/10.3390/gastronomy2040015

AMA Style

Cordeiro CM, Lindström NB. Unveiling the Essence of Gastronomy: A Data-Driven Exploration of Culinary Expertise in the Nordic Region. Gastronomy. 2024; 2(4):215-232. https://doi.org/10.3390/gastronomy2040015

Chicago/Turabian Style

Cordeiro, Cheryl Marie, and Nataliya Berbyuk Lindström. 2024. "Unveiling the Essence of Gastronomy: A Data-Driven Exploration of Culinary Expertise in the Nordic Region" Gastronomy 2, no. 4: 215-232. https://doi.org/10.3390/gastronomy2040015

APA Style

Cordeiro, C. M., & Lindström, N. B. (2024). Unveiling the Essence of Gastronomy: A Data-Driven Exploration of Culinary Expertise in the Nordic Region. Gastronomy, 2(4), 215-232. https://doi.org/10.3390/gastronomy2040015

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