Since its Watson computer system handily beat two humans in a nationally televised game of “Jeopardy” three years ago, IBM has been formulating a vital mission for the super-smart software:

Help consumers create unique and great-tasting meals.

After all, “everybody eats,” said Steve Abrams, an engineer in IBM’s Watson Group. “You talk about food and you talk about cooking, that affects people’s daily lives.”

With that in mind, the Armonk, New York-based company has launched Chef Watson, a research effort with the Institute of Culinary Education and Bon Appétit magazine to pursue what IBM calls “cognitive cooking.” Previewed during a demonstration last year at the company’s Almaden research laboratory in San Jose, the effort already is transforming gastronomy.

An artificial-intelligence system that understands common speech, and learns from its successes and failures, Watson defeated two former “Jeopardy” champions in 2011 by quickly answering questions about topics ranging from famous authors to medical disorders. Since then, IBM has touted the technology for everything from analyzing business data to helping doctors devise treatments for patients, an idea being studied at several hospitals.

But Chef Watson is aimed at just about everyone.

It analyzes thousands of existing recipes to understand their ingredients, including their molecular composition, along with data on regional and cultural food preferences. Then, if someone submits a query about a type of food they’d like to try, it uses its knowledge of the human palate to respond with an original list of food combinations to consider.

Bon Appétit, which is allowing a few readers to beta-test Watson’s cooking capabilities through an app on the magazine’s website, offers this explanation of how it works:

“To start, choose an ingredient — any ingredient! — you want to cook with. From there, you decide which kind of dish you want to make: a fricassee, perhaps? A burger? Paella? Finally, you choose a style or theme, anything from “Tuscany” or “Friday Night” to “Fourth of July” or “Chefs’ Day Off.” At last, Chef Watson presents you with 100 recipe options, each with different ingredient lists, plus suggested cooking instructions, based on similar Bon Appétit recipes.”

When chefs with the New York-based Institute of Culinary Education tested Watson with a food truck at the South-by-Southwest music and video festival in Austin earlier this year, they decided to stretch the software’s creative limits. So they asked it to come up with a tasty burrito that contained chocolate and also had an Austrian flavor. IBM says the computer’s recipe — which married chocolate with ground beef, cheese, vanilla, orange peel, apricot and cinnamon — turned out to be a hit.

Another well-received Watson recipe was Vietnamese apple kebab, which surprisingly paired strawberries with mushrooms. The computer figured those ingredients would go well together because they contain a common flavor compound, g-dodecalactone. Abrams noted that studies have found Westerners tend to like ingredients with the same molecular basis, although people in other parts of the world favor more diverse fare.

Other treats dreamed up by the computer include Belgian bacon pudding, Portuguese lobster roll, Turkish bruschetta, Baltic apple pie and Peruvian potato poutine.

Although no restaurants are using Watson’s recipes, some grocery and restaurant chains have expressed interest in the technology, Abrams said, adding that IBM hopes it results in food that satisfies peoples’ dietary needs while also tasting good.

Although Thailand’s government recently unveiled a food-sampling robot with an electronic nose and tongue that purportedly can tell restaurants whether their Thai food is authentic, computer systems to help consumers cook have tended to be little more than bulky, hard-to-decipher recipe databases. That makes Chef Watson’s ability to create new and sometimes bizarre food combinations unique. Moreover, many of its recipes have been successful, said Michael Laiskonis, the Institute of Culinary Education’s creative director.

“Most of the time it works, 90 percent easily,” he said. “It’s given us ingredients that we wouldn’t normally associate with each other.”

Laiskonis envisions consumers one day walking into grocery stores armed with a Chef Watson-enabled smartphone and having the software quickly provide recipes for whatever food they consider buying. But for now, he said, IBM and the culinary institute plan something old-school to highlight the technology — a cookbook.

“Some are very straightforward,” he said of the Watson recipes in the soon-to-be-published book. But others, he added, will be “a little more challenging to show how we’ve pushed the creativity of the system.”

Contact Steve Johnson at sjohnson@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5043. Follow him at Twitter.com/steveatmercnews