Flavor network and the principles of food pairing

Glaucus

Glaucus

Glaucus

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I haven't read it all yet, planning to read it all tonight at work, but its extremely interesting and thought some of you may be interested in.

Lots of diagrams showing common links as well as lots if reading.

http://www.nature.com/srep/2011/111215/srep00196/full/srep00196.html
The cultural diversity of culinary practice, as illustrated by the variety of regional cuisines, raises the question of whether there are any general patterns that determine the ingredient combinations used in food today or principles that transcend individual tastes and recipes. We introduce a flavor network that captures the flavor compounds shared by culinary ingredients. Western cuisines show a tendency to use ingredient pairs that share many flavor compounds, supporting the so-called food pairing hypothesis. By contrast, East Asian cuisines tend to avoid compound sharing ingredients. Given the increasing availability of information on food preparation, our data-driven investigation opens new avenues towards a systematic understanding of culinary practice.
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I started reading it as it sounds potentially interesting but it's too early in the morning for me to have any sort of attention span :p I'll try again later.
 
molinari said:
Get some good coffee in you!
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Where I work there is no such thing :p Though the University coffee has got a lot more drinkable since I went on my campaign of being really annoying to the coffee staff about making espresso properly...

I'm sure they all love me now :p
 
An interesting read, but the science behind is a little confusing - while I can understand the theory behind the so-called flavour network, I wasn't aware that the textbook they've used for their research worked in the way they said it does.

The backbone of the way their food network appears to work comes from using Fenaroli's Handbook of Flavor Ingredients to identify the component flavours of ingredients and then finding commonality between other ingredients; they then group these results according to various criteria, such as if they were usually found combined in a recipe.

However, The last copy of Fenaroli's that I flicked through, admittedly at some haste, appeared to be more of a guideline on recreating flavours through the use of various substances. Some were natural and some were artificially-derived, but I don't recall the book offering chemical breakdowns of specific ingredients - it did cover some of that, but felt more like a reference book for people who wanted to study artificial flavourings.

I appreciate the paper linked to in the OP is slightly wider-ranging than just the flavour network itself, but it's the flavour compounds aspect that interests me the most about this area of food science and I'd really like to know more about their research into this aspect of their paper.

I don't suppose anyone's read the latest edition of Fenaroli's, have they?
 
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