The Flavor Graph
Gizmodo has a super interesting wrapup on a Nature paper about why Asian and Western food taste so different:
According to the study, Western cuisines have a tendency to pair ingredients that share many of the same flavor compounds. East Asian cuisines, however, do precisely the contrary, avoiding ingredients that share the same flavor compounds. The more flavors two ingredients share, the less likely they would be paired together in Asian kitchens.
Be sure to check out the large version of the flavor graph. It’s pretty amazing. It breaks out how closely two foods are connected to each other based on their flavor compounds.
[Via @tyahma]