From Piping to Printing: An Action-Based Approach to Computational Food Fabrication

Current 3D food printing systems impose engineering paradigms onto culinary practice, requiring users to design food as geometric models and slice them into discrete layers. This approach fundamentally misunderstands how humans create food – through continuous cooking actions like piping, filling, and spreading that encode centuries of embodied knowledge. We present SPICE (Smart Production of Individualized Culinary Essentials), a multi-material 3D printing system that reimagines food fabrication through action-oriented path planning derived from traditional cooking techniques. Rather than decomposing geometry into discontinuous layers and parallel toolpaths, SPICE generates continuous paths that directly encode cooking actions. Through three demonstration dishes, we show how preserving the gestural nature of cooking enables more intuitive control while enhancing precision over nutritional content. This work contributes to growing efforts in HCI to develop craft-informed fabrication systems, positioning food as a critical domain for exploring how computational tools can augment rather than replace embodied making practices.