There’s a Scientific Reason Why Indian Food Is So Delicious

[AdamSmith]

There’s a Scientific Reason Why Indian Food Is So Delicious
By Hilary Pollack March 3, 2015 / 10:30 am

When I die, bury me inside a vat of saag paneer. Indian food is categorically delicious: its flavors are complex, oscillating between sweet, savory, and spicy; its textures meld creamy sauces with doughy breads and tender meat and vegetables to make the slop of dreams. It’s a divine synthesis that is aromatic and sophisticated without being bougie. Hell, you can get a better-than-decent plate of it for nary more than the cost of a deli sandwich.

But what is it that makes Indian food so endlessly rich and tasty? Scientists were wondering, too, and recently performed an analysis of 2,500 recipes to find out, as first observed in the Washington Post.

Researchers Anupam Jaina, Rakhi N Kb, and Ganesh Bagler from the Indian Institute for Technology in Jodhpur ran a fine-tooth comb through TarlaDalal.com—a recipe database of more than 17,000 dishes that self-identifies as “India’s #1 food site”—in attempts to decode the magic of your chicken tikka masala or aloo gobi. Sure, there are commonalities in seasoning that run through Indian cuisine as a whole, but just how varied are they?

The answer is more complicated than you might expect.

While many Western cuisines attempt to pair ingredients that share “flavor compounds”—the minute timbres that indicate something like types of sweetness or sourness or spiciness—Indian food’s signature is that it combines ingredients that don’t share these qualities at all.

“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,” the researchers wrote. “[The] more the extent of flavor-sharing between any two ingredients, [the] lesser their co-occurrence.”

For example, if you find cayenne in an Indian dish, you’re unlikely to find another ingredient that shares the same compounds—though you may find other spices that have complementary, but not identical, attributes. This is true across the eight different types of sub-cuisines studied, from Bengali to Punjabi to South Indian.

A total of 194 unique ingredients were identified in the recipes, and subdivided into 15 categories: spices, seeds, herbs, meats, etc. But—rather unsurprisingly—the spices, and their methods of pairing and combination, emerged as the character-defining attributes of Indian cuisine.

That like flavors should be combined for better dishes—an unspoken but popular hypothesis stipulated by recipe-building in North American, Western European, and Latin American cultures—is an idea essentially reversed in Indian cuisine. In the words of the study, “Each of the spices is uniquely placed in its recipe to shape the flavor-sharing pattern with [the] rest of the ingredients, and is sensitive to replacement even with other spices.”

In other words, each spice serves a very specific role in the dish it inhabits, from the warm sweetness of ginger to the slight bitterness of tamarind to the zingy freshness of cilantro. And it is the combination of many of these components—a typical Indian dish can incorporate a dozen different herbs and spices—that creates the flavor fingerprint that we’ve come to associate with a good plate of chana masala.

So while instincts may say to pile sweet on sweet or hot ‘n’ spicy on even more hot ‘n’ spicy, keep in mind that opposites sometimes attract with delicious results.

http://munchies.vice.com/articles/theres-a-scientific-reason-why-indian-food-is-so-delicious

[MsGuy]

I knew there was some reason I didn't like Indian food. Nice to know it's not just that they put peanuts in their soup.

[lookin]

I knew there was some reason I didn't like Indian food. Nice to know it's not just that they put peanuts in their soup.

Are you sure you're not thinking of Thai?

I eat Indian every chance I get and don't recall peanuts. Dal is very common but that's other legumes, usually chickpeas. Sweets sometimes contain pistachios, and cashews are used in certain regions. No doubt there are some dishes with peanuts, but they're nowhere near as common as in Thai food.

One of the best dishes I ever ate was an eggplant curry in a small remote Indian village, and I don't particularly like eggplant. But the women started cooking that dish three days ahead. The most time consuming thing they did, so I understand, was preparing the spices. Cardamom seeds, for example, need to be toasted to release the flavor and then blended with other spices, and then everything marinated and cooked with other ingredients for a long time so that the flavors are blended through and through.

The way I separate a good Indian restaurant from a bad one is whether or not the spices are suffused throughout the other ingredients. If the inside of the chicken or lamb is flavorful, you've got a good dish. If the flavor coats only the outside, they've seen the last of yours truly.

Like many other spicy cuisines, spice does not mean heat. An Indian host is like a Jewish mother when it comes to pushing helping after helping on guests. It's the polite and hospitable thing to do. The more heat a dish has, the likelier a guest will say he's had enough; and that's important when a host is of modest means.

I tried cooking Indian at home once, and it was OK, but nowhere close to what a village woman can put on the table.

[MsGuy]

No peanuts?

Really?

Just goes to show how your prejudices can limit your life choices.

Well, it's too late now. I guess I'll have to wait until my next incarnation to sample the wonders of Indian cuisine.

[Suckrates]

There’s a Scientific Reason Why Indian Food Is So Delicious

By Hilary Pollack March 3, 2015 / 10:30 am

When I die, bury me inside a vat of saag paneer. Indian food is categorically delicious: its flavors are complex, oscillating between sweet, savory, and spicy; its textures meld creamy sauces with doughy breads and tender meat and vegetables to make the slop of dreams. It’s a divine synthesis that is aromatic and sophisticated without being bougie. Hell, you can get a better-than-decent plate of it for nary more than the cost of a deli sandwich.

But what is it that makes Indian food so endlessly rich and tasty? Scientists were wondering, too, and recently performed an analysis of 2,500 recipes to find out, as first observed in the Washington Post.

Researchers Anupam Jaina, Rakhi N Kb, and Ganesh Bagler from the Indian Institute for Technology in Jodhpur ran a fine-tooth comb through TarlaDalal.com—a recipe database of more than 17,000 dishes that self-identifies as “India’s #1 food site”—in attempts to decode the magic of your chicken tikka masala or aloo gobi. Sure, there are commonalities in seasoning that run through Indian cuisine as a whole, but just how varied are they?

The answer is more complicated than you might expect.

While many Western cuisines attempt to pair ingredients that share “flavor compounds”—the minute timbres that indicate something like types of sweetness or sourness or spiciness—Indian food’s signature is that it combines ingredients that don’t share these qualities at all.

“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,” the researchers wrote. “[The] more the extent of flavor-sharing between any two ingredients, [the] lesser their co-occurrence.”

For example, if you find cayenne in an Indian dish, you’re unlikely to find another ingredient that shares the same compounds—though you may find other spices that have complementary, but not identical, attributes. This is true across the eight different types of sub-cuisines studied, from Bengali to Punjabi to South Indian.

A total of 194 unique ingredients were identified in the recipes, and subdivided into 15 categories: spices, seeds, herbs, meats, etc. But—rather unsurprisingly—the spices, and their methods of pairing and combination, emerged as the character-defining attributes of Indian cuisine.

That like flavors should be combined for better dishes—an unspoken but popular hypothesis stipulated by recipe-building in North American, Western European, and Latin American cultures—is an idea essentially reversed in Indian cuisine. In the words of the study, “Each of the spices is uniquely placed in its recipe to shape the flavor-sharing pattern with [the] rest of the ingredients, and is sensitive to replacement even with other spices.”

In other words, each spice serves a very specific role in the dish it inhabits, from the warm sweetness of ginger to the slight bitterness of tamarind to the zingy freshness of cilantro. And it is the combination of many of these components—a typical Indian dish can incorporate a dozen different herbs and spices—that creates the flavor fingerprint that we’ve come to associate with a good plate of chana masala.

So while instincts may say to pile sweet on sweet or hot ‘n’ spicy on even more hot ‘n’ spicy, keep in mind that opposites sometimes attract with delicious results.

http://munchies.vice.com/articles/theres-a-scientific-reason-why-indian-food-is-so-delicious

My brain hurts

[AdamSmith]

My brain hurts

Better that than what hurts the morning after you eat too much vindaloo.

[Guest Harvitor]

I am not a fan of some vegetables, but if it is seasoned and prepared for an Indian meal, I can eat it!

[nycman]

I lived in NYC for four years....before I finally admitted I hated Indian food.

Thankfully, they didn’t kick me out.