Foodpairing - Introduction

Introduction

The foodpairing method is designed to inspire chef, foodies, home cooks and food engineers. The method aids recipe design and provides new possible food combinations, which are theoretically sound on the basis of their flavor. Foodpairing provides possible food combinations, which are solely based on the intrinsic properties of the different food products, they are based on the flavor compounds which are present in the products. This results in possible combinations that are innovative and are not influenced or restricted by cultural and traditional context of the products. This independence occasionally results in surprising and unusual combinations, for example: endives in a dessert, white chocolate and caviar, chocolate and cauliflower. Even as they are unusual, these combinations are quite tasty, because the combined food products have flavor components in common. The foodpairing methodology opens a whole new world of possible food combinations.

Secondly, foodpairing is able to provide a basis for the success of traditionally settled food combinations. It is not a coincidence that the vast majority of the traditional top hit combinations, like bacon and cheese, asparagus and butter have many flavor components in common. By applying the foodpairing method to recipe design, the chance for successful combinations is certainly more likely.

Currently there are only a few websites that provide ingredient combinations based on foodpairing. Foodpairing is not to be confused with recipe based, ingredient match finders. These search engines provide matching ingredients based on their combination occurrence in a vast recipe database. Such tools do not provide ingredient matches based on the definition of foodpairing, nor do they offer new combinations, since a proposed match can always be found in another recipe. Nevertheless these tools can be an inspiration in recipe design.