Analysis of Food Pairing in Regional Cuisines of India

Any national cuisine is a sum total of its variety of regional cuisines, which are the cultural and historical identifiers of their respective regions. India is home to a number of regional cuisines that showcase its culinary diversity. Here, we study recipes from eight different regional cuisines o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-10, Vol.10 (10), p.e0139539-e0139539
Main Authors: Jain, Anupam, N K, Rakhi, Bagler, Ganesh
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Analysis
Brain size
Climate
Cookbooks
Cooking
Dairy Products
Data management
Data processing
Flavor compounds
Flavors
Food
Food analysis
Food Preferences
Food processing machinery
Food production
Food science
Historical buildings
Humans
Hypotheses
India
Ingredients
Meat
Nutrition
Recipes
Recommender systems
Regional analysis
Residence Characteristics
Spices
Studies
Vegetables
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Summary:Any national cuisine is a sum total of its variety of regional cuisines, which are the cultural and historical identifiers of their respective regions. India is home to a number of regional cuisines that showcase its culinary diversity. Here, we study recipes from eight different regional cuisines of India spanning various geographies and climates. We investigate the phenomenon of food pairing which examines compatibility of two ingredients in a recipe in terms of their shared flavor compounds. Food pairing was enumerated at the level of cuisine, recipes as well as ingredient pairs by quantifying flavor sharing between pairs of ingredients. Our results indicate that each regional cuisine follows negative food pairing pattern; more the extent of flavor sharing between two ingredients, lesser their co-occurrence in that cuisine. We find that frequency of ingredient usage is central in rendering the characteristic food pairing in each of these cuisines. Spice and dairy emerged as the most significant ingredient classes responsible for the biased pattern of food pairing. Interestingly while individual spices contribute to negative food pairing, dairy products on the other hand tend to deviate food pairing towards positive side. Our data analytical study highlighting statistical properties of the regional cuisines, brings out their culinary fingerprints that could be used to design algorithms for generating novel recipes and recipe recommender systems. It forms a basis for exploring possible causal connection between diet and health as well as prospection of therapeutic molecules from food ingredients. Our study also provides insights as to how big data can change the way we look at food.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0139539