If there's one secret society that's been very successful of late, it's that of those who come up with inventing recipes using unlikely ingredients, usual products that require a visit to a dozen specialist or exotic stores. Components that are very expensive but whose recipe only requires a single (rounded) spoonful before the next time you need it for another preparation, in 2027.

These individuals work secretly for the furniture manufacturers' lobby, who are delighted to sell all those cupboards that will be used to store chickpea flour, tamarind paste and date vinegar. These will become five-star hotels for food moths and are guaranteed to be left undisturbed for a few years until a new spoonful of green banana flour is needed.

Maybe they get together at monthly meetings of their strange club, with each member throwing out an ingredient idea for the next month. Maybe someone says, "No, not cider vinegar. Everyone's got that now. How about mango vinegar instead?" Maybe they make bets with each other (the first to include a spoonful of spirulina in their recipe wins!).

At any rate, because of them, customers have seen their relations deteriorate with the clerk at the local corner store, who feels patronized when asked, "Do you have any wheat starch?" In addition, because of them, every year, people who move house have to pack chestnut flour, mirin, toasted sesame oil, sumac berries and oyster sauce... whose lids are too sticky to read the expiration date (to ease their guilt, the designers of recipes with complicated ingredients have led them to believe that these could be kept for a long time).

They love to add adjectives: "tricolor" after quinoa, "yellow" after beet, "fresh" after kaffir lime leaves, "wild" before any fruit or vegetable name. They have a clear preference for ingredients their readers won't be able to pronounce when asking for them at the supermarket (bok choy? Worcestershire sauce?). Before writing their recipes, they make sure that the required ingredients must be sourced from different types of hard-to-find stores (Peruvian oca and wild garlic pesto). The more complicated the product is to find, the more they insist on using only a small quantity ("a tablespoon of coconut flower syrup," "four sorrel leaves," "the zest from one combava"). When they create leftover recipes, it's always the ones we already know what to do with (with leftover brioche!), never the ones we're stuck with (after using a spoonful of it, what are we supposed to do with the remaining kilo of quinoa flour?).

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