ABSTRACT
Food pairing is sometimes advertised as a scientific method to identify which foods and drinks go well together. Of course, food pairing does not apply every time that only two ingredients are used, and this is fortunate, because dishes with only two ingredients on the basis of odour would probably lack interest in terms of consistency, taste, trigeminal sensation, calcium perception, fat perception, colour and so on. Then, when it is argued that “the major volatile molecules of two foods are the same”, this is ambiguous, because “major” could be about quantity or quality (but the human diversity in olfactory receptors does not make this measurement possible). Beyond artistic issues that might disrupt food pairing “rules”, there is a good chance that this pairing is also influenced by nutritional balance issues as a whole, as well as more particular preservative effects of some ingredients, like spices.
