Exploring the Food Pairing Hypothesis in Arab Cuisine: A Study in Computational Gastronomy

Abstract

The love to explore propelled the humans to try and discover new things. One of which is experimenting with food to come up with new flavours. Eating a strawberry with chocolate will create a unique taste, while eating the strawberry with cheese will create a completely different taste. The concept behind these combinations is something called food pairing. The science behind food pairing is widely studied in the Western and European gastronomic societies. In contrast, there are no reported studies of that nature conducted in the Arab counterparts. Our research will be the first to examine the food pairing hypothesis in Arab cuisine. This hypothesis states that food with common flavour compounds taste good when consumed together. For the purpose of validating the hypothesis, a quantitative mathematical model will be developed and applied on a dataset consisting of ingredients compounds found in Arab cuisine recipes. In this paper, we are presenting a proof-of-concept of our ongoing project, as well as showing the steps that will be followed to apply the food pairing on Arab cuisine.