Some tastes just go together attractively : lamb and rosemary , tomato plant and basil , peanut butter and jelly . But despite a unexampled wave of molecular gastronomy , human resource can only go so far — which is why scientists are develop computational chemistry techniques to predict the flavor combinations of the future .
Chemical and Engineering News takes a farseeing , and very thorough , look at how the idea has progressed , but what you really need to make love is that the concept is really attain traction .
For proof that there ’s commercial-grade interestingness in this science , one need face no further than a company calledSense for Taste . The company is create new algorithms — which share major similarity with those used to find living - saving drugs and search for life on Mars — that aggregate selective information about fundamental flavor compounds to create new pairings .
But the move to using computers to forebode sapidity sexual union originally sprang into being last decade when François Benzi , a Swiss pill pusher , started working with British chef Heston Blumenthal . They noticed that a luck of Blumenthal ’s morecreative parings — such as pork barrel liver and jasmine flower or livid chocolate and caviar — shared basic similarity in flavor chemical compound compounding , despite fathom radically dissimilar on the aerofoil .
Inspired by Benzi and Bluenthal ’s study , organometallic pharmacist Martin Lerschdecided to try his hired hand at using introductory chemistry to predict flavor combination . He focussed his work on pairing up aromatic compound and , through publishing his employment , his sexual union have become a hit in the nutrient blogosphere . His biggest achiever yet?Strawberry and coriander .
Whether their work will be a runaway winner , of path , is up for debate . Certainly one of its favored recipes — Prunus amygdalus sponge cake with poached banana , chocolate , and Heinz tomato tomato ketchup ice pick — sound like it could either be celestial or absolutely loathly .
But then , peradventure that ’s the point . If computational king can be used to specialize down the infinite field or possibilities when it descend to flavour mating , it frees up human fourth dimension which can be expend smack and tweaking . And that way lies a flavour combining more exciting — but equally as good — as peanut vine butter and jelly . [ Chemical and Engineering News ]
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