Spices form the basis of food pairing in Indian cuisine

TL;DR

This study reveals that Indian cuisine predominantly exhibits negative food pairing driven by spices and ingredient frequency, contrasting with positive pairing in Western cuisines, and introduces a model for culinary evolution.

Contribution

It uncovers the negative food pairing pattern in Indian cuisine and presents a model explaining ingredient use and flavor sharing, emphasizing the role of spices and ingredient frequency.

Findings

Indian cuisine shows strong negative food pairing.

Spices are central to ingredient composition.

A culinary evolution model reproduces observed patterns.

Abstract

Culinary practices are influenced by climate, culture, history and geography. Molecular composition of recipes in a cuisine reveals patterns in food preferences. Indian cuisine encompasses a number of diverse sub-cuisines separated by geographies, climates and cultures. Its culinary system has a long history of health-centric dietary practices focused on disease prevention and promotion of health. We study food pairing in recipes of Indian cuisine to show that, in contrast to positive food pairing reported in some Western cuisines, Indian cuisine has a strong signature of negative food pairing; more the extent of flavor sharing between any two ingredients, lesser their co-occurrence. This feature is independent of recipe size and is not explained by ingredient category-based recipe constitution alone. Ingredient frequency emerged as the dominant factor specifying the characteristic flavor sharing pattern of the cuisine. Spices, individually and as a category, form the basis of ingredient composition in Indian cuisine. We also present a culinary evolution model which reproduces ingredient use distribution as well as negative food pairing of the cuisine. Our study provides a basis for designing novel signature recipes, healthy recipe alterations and recipe recommender systems.