Spices form the basis of food pairing in Indian cuisine SCIENTISTS have figured out why Indian food, with its perfect blend of spices and sweetness, tastes so damn delicious by using some hardcore science. And it’s pretty amazing ! Researchers at the Indian Institute for Technology in Jodhpur examined more than 2,000 recipes and 200 ingredients to find out why Indian food is so unique and revered. It has to do with the flavors, and how those flavors are or are not paired, right down to the molecular level. In many Western cuisines, ingredients are usually paired together with other ingredients that have similar flavours. But Indian food, contain ingredients which do not overlap in flavour. “Each of the spices is uniquely placed in its recipe to shape the flavour-sharing pattern with the rest of the ingredients, and is sensitive to replacement even with other spices.” They looked at 2,543 dishes in eight different sub-cuisines - Bengali, Gujarati, Jain, Maharashtrian, Mughlai, Punjabi, Rajasthani and South Indian - and found that together they contained a total of 194 unique ingredients, which they separated into 15 categories: spice, vegetable, fruit, plant derivative, nut/seed, cereal/crop, dairy, plant, pulse, herb, meat, fish/seafood, beverage, animal product, and flower. The cuisine is complicated, no doubt: while some dishes contained a whopping 40 different ingredients, the average number was seven. The takeaway is that part of what makes Indian food unique is the way flavours rub up against each other. But all those ingredients are important because in any single dish, each one brings its own flavour. Those who have designed these different cuisine must have complete extensive knowledge of all the spices. "Food for the body is not enough, there must be food which reaches the soul" ====================================================== Source:http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1502/1502.03815.pdf
