The product meets the extraordinary taste combinations. Basic principles of product combination

Many people looking to lose weight should consider the food pairing principle based on research by the American naturopath, Herbert Shelton. The principle of compatibility of various ingredients with each other is justified chemical composition, which is different for each type of food. The composition completely affects the time of absorption and breakdown of food by the stomach. If incompatible foods enter the body together, then due to different digestion times, they can cause serious digestive problems. While adhering to proper nutrition, this property must be taken into account.

The first figure who turned his attention to the peculiarities of food processing was Academician Pavlov, who noted in his works that many factors affect assimilation - the composition of the product, the digestive department in which the component is processed, the rate of digestion by gastric juice. His works formed the basis of all the scientific activities of Shelton and many other nutritionists.

Product Compatibility Chart

In addition to the assimilation time, it is also necessary to take into account energy value products - food, which is dominated by carbohydrates, is poorly combined with fats. The same goes for proteins. In order to make it easier to determine the combination of products, a special table was created by which it can be determined. From it you can see with which ingredients we combine this or that component, and with which not.

Flavor combinations

To prepare tasty dish it is enough to take into account the flavor combination of products with each other. It will greatly diversify the daily menu, delight the receptors and make weight loss recipes less monotonous.

Many famous chefs use established combinations of edible ingredients as the basis of their culinary experiments. Here are just a few of the more successful ones:

• tomato + basil + garlic - this classic combination will always come in handy in any dish where tomatoes are present;
• olive oil + garlic + lemon juice - this combination can become an ideal dressing not only for any salad, but also for the second;
• soy sauce + honey + ginger - this combination can also be used to dress salads or marinate meat products or fish;
• avocado + shrimp - a healthy balanced combination used for weight loss, salads, sandwiches or snacks are prepared with it;
• cheese + grapes - a combination served with wines as an independent snack, but is often used in salads for the most intense taste;
• rosemary + game - rosemary belongs to very bright spices, but in this combination it very successfully complements meat;
• potatoes + nutmeg - the spice will set off the aroma of potatoes prepared in any way;
• potatoes + dill - dill is a very successful combination with boiled potatoes, the same applies to salads, which include this ingredient;

• beans + walnuts- an interesting combination that complements both vegetable dishes and those in which meat is present. Nuts go well with green beans and grain;
• lemon + fish - in this combination, you can use lemon juice or stuff the fish with citrus slices, the effect will be the same - the pulp will become tender, the fishy smell will not be so noticeable.

With spices

Correctly selected spices are able to create interesting combinations with other products, enhancing their taste, complementing and allowing the aroma to unfold. The system for combining spices and products is based on the same principles - many seasonings can speed up the processing of products, and can whet the appetite or replace sugar, which is only a plus when dietary nutrition... Here are the most common spice combinations:

Food combination principles from Maya Gogulan

Maya Gogulan is a well-known journalist and supporter of the principle of separate nutrition. Her system is a combination of products based on food ingredients. The main combination rules look like this:

• carbohydrates should not be consumed at the same time as carbohydrates (for example, eat porridge and pasta with bread);
• eat proteins in one meal with carbohydrates (for example, do not eat fish with a bite of bread, but oatmeal with chicken);
• vegetables can be combined with each other and with any other products;
• vegetable and animal fats are well supplemented with carbohydrates or protein.

In addition, Gogulan advises to completely eliminate sugar from the diet, reduce the amount of salt and spices that lead to increased appetite. The choice of products should be towards unprocessed ones. A good example oatmeal can serve - it is better to prefer coarse, unpeeled flakes than heat-treated ones. It is necessary to leave the table, a little undernourished. There must be a desire to do something. Sleepiness and laziness are signs that a person has overeat, and this is not good.

Many experts advise also to pay attention to the method of cooking - to reduce the use of fried foods, replacing them with boiled ones.

Shelton food combination table

In order to make it easier to navigate among a variety of products and adhere to healthy eating, Herbert Shelton developed a special table that allows you to determine the compatibility of certain components. It is very simple to use it - select a product in the first column and see which of the above components it is combined with.

Gradually, you can remember all the listed components and their features. The basis of their combination is in an acidic or alkaline component, which decomposes in the stomach for a certain time.

rules

• choose only natural and fresh ingredients for cooking;
• do not overeat - leave the table with a slight feeling of hunger and lightness in the body;
• the desire to sleep and the heaviness in the stomach are bad signals - this is evidence of overeating;
• you need to eat often, but little by little; take into account the acidity of the product when adding it to the dish;
• a large proportion of the diet should be fresh vegetables.

The principle of combining products can facilitate the process of digestion without spending a lot of energy on processing food, which can be usefully spent in other directions. Having adjusted the diet, additional forces will appear and are possible for active life.

Pineapple and cheese actually contain many similar substances. Their combination allows them to interact, enriching the taste. The best pairing is blue cheese, the sourness of which is balanced by the sweetness of the fruit.

• Strawberry and Parmesan

Strawberries sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese have replaced chocolate-covered strawberries. The butyric acid in this cheese, which is also found in chocolate, reacts with the flavonoids in the strawberries to create a rich, sweet taste.

• Pizza and tuna

The MSG flavor in tuna makes the pizza taste more intense and satisfying. And because tuna satiates quickly, you don't want to eat the whole pizza. Tuna can be raw, grilled, or canned.

• Dark chocolate and beets

The substances geozyme and pyrazine give a special taste to beets. The latter is also found in dark chocolate, and when you combine it with beets, you get an interesting contrast of sweetness and bitterness. Try to sprinkle beet salad grated dark chocolate.

• Mashed potatoes and ketchup

In India, McDonald's sells a sandwich with potato cutlet, and visitors happily dip it in ketchup. Potatoes have a mild flavor and ketchup revives them with MSG.

• Chocolate and soy sauce

The perfect combination from a chemical point of view. Salinity soy sauce emphasizes the sweetness of the chocolate. In addition, both products contain fried, vegetable and fruit components, mutually enriching each other's flavors. Try dipping a chocolate bar in soy sauce or drizzling it over a chocolate dessert.

• Ketchup and dark chocolate

You probably sprinkle ketchup on a lot of other foods, but you’ve hardly ever tried it with dark chocolate. However, the latter has a tomato flavor, and ketchup enhances them by enriching the flavor. They both also have hints of parsley, thanks to the linalool molecule.

• Pickled cucumber and ice cream

Pregnant women intuitively sense that this combination can trigger a reward response in the brain. Here's why: The salt in pickled cucumber is essential for normal blood circulation and cellular metabolism, while the sugar and fat in ice cream provide energy through fast carbohydrates. Your body needs all of this to survive. Therefore, the brain encourages the use of such combinations, even if they seem inappropriate.

• Red caviar and white chocolate

The famous British chef Heston Blumenthal understood that a touch of salty on white chocolate would enrich his taste and soften the sweetness. He experimented with combinations and experimentally discovered what was best to lay on tiles. white chocolate red caviar.

• Nutella and French fries

Salt enhances the taste, even if it is sweet. Try the Nutella Nut Chocolate Massage with French Fries. As mentioned above, potatoes have a mild flavor, so in this case they only act as a container for salt. You can also substitute a chocolate milkshake for nutella.

Play a very important role, together with vegetables they supply us the required amount vitamins and minerals. That is why, traditionally, fruits are so often substituted for dessert on the Italian table.

Open up to new tastes

Combining fruits or berries with spices is a great way to highlight the flavor or create something new in your kitchen. Recently, however, fruits not only fulfill the traditional function of a dessert, but are also used to prepare snacks, salads, and can also be used as ingredients in main dishes or as a side dish (every time I admire my favorite combination Parma ham with sweet melon).

Such culinary changes do not diminish the dignity of the authentic Italian cuisine on the contrary, the right spices for fruit dishes are intriguing and inspiring. Try orange wedges sprinkled with ginger juice for an emphasis on freshness, or pear slices with soft cream cheese like Philadelphia on a cinnamon lettuce. Or mix summer with winter - season with salt and pepper slices of fresh ripe peach and serve as a side dish with grilled pork.

Creative freedom in your kitchen

Another unusual combination that can decorate any table is strawberries, diced and seasoned with 2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar, generously sprinkled with black pepper and sugar, put in the oven for 5 minutes. And if you are ready for a little more risky experiments with strawberries, then cut them into pieces in a large salad bowl, pour coconut milk, add maple syrup and 1 tablespoon curry (or your choice).

Well, if you want to freely experiment with tastes in your kitchen or create a truly unusual specialty of the house, then in order to help you in your culinary creativity, we will present the most successful combinations of berries and fruits with spices and aromatic herbs.

Why did I suddenly start talking about combining fruits with spices and aromatic herbs? Everything is very simple - the summer season is approaching, and with it a full set of fruits for fantastic fruit salads... Don't be afraid to experiment!

Most people eat because they like tasty food, not just because they need energy to sustain life. Appearance, texture, nutritional value of the dish are important, but the most important thing is taste. It is taste that determines good cooking dishes.

Improving and changing taste are the main tasks of the chef.

Just a small digression. The English language has the word "flavor". The dictionary simply translates it as "taste." But it is not so. Flavor is a combination of taste and aroma. An amazingly capacious word, which, alas, is not in the Russian language. The best thing that I could come up with is “taste” to somehow distinguish the word “flavor” from the word “taste”. Do you have any ideas?

The most important taste of a dish is the taste of its main ingredients. Beef steak should taste like a steak, and green peas should taste like green peas, etc. However, the product itself often has a subtle and flat taste, so the chef's job is to make the product more interesting by combining different ingredients.

The harmony of taste and aroma that the chef creates by skillfully combining ingredients is sometimes called - flavor scheme.

Building a flavor scheme

When a chef prepares a dish, he must take into account not only its taste.

We perceive the characteristics of a dish according to 4 parameters:

1. Appearance
2. Aroma
3. Taste
4. Complex mouthfeel (texture, dryness or moisture, softness or crunchiness) and temperature.

All of these factors are very important, but we will focus on two of them - taste and aroma. Why not just taste? The taste buds of our tongue sense 4 basic sensations: salinity, sweetness, bitterness and acidity. But flavor is a combination of taste and aroma. If we don't feel the aroma, the dish tastes less delicious.

Taste qualities are primary and secondary... The primary taste is the taste and aroma of the main ingredients. For example, in Irish Lamb Roast, the flavors of lamb, onions, leeks and potatoes are primary. These taste qualities dominate, while others enhance and improve them.

Let's take a look at the flavor scheme using the veal blanket as an example.

Veal itself does not have a very pronounced taste. In this recipe, it is stewed (rather than fried or baked), so the flavor is even weaker. When choosing additional flavors and spices, we want to avoid those that disguise delicate taste veal. Using white veal stock is a great way to enhance the original flavor of a dish. We could use water, but get a less flavorful dish. The brown broth tastes too strong for this dish and would completely change the characteristics of the dish. Onions and a bouquet of garni are added to the broth to add depth to the flavor.
We'll also add roux, cream and egg ice, lemon juice, nutmeg and pepper. The function of ru is thickening, creating texture. Butter in ru also enriches the taste of the dish. Lieson makes the dish creamy and richer. However, too fatty sauce combined with the delicate flavor of veal will make our dish unnecessarily intrusive. Therefore, we use lemon to neutralize the fat content of cream and eggs, to balance the taste. There should be just enough lemon to balance the flavor, but the dish should not acquire a lemon flavor. Finally, a small amount of nutmeg and pepper lend fullness and completeness to the flavor without oversaturation. If the first thing you smell is the taste of nutmeg, you've overdone it.

So what can be learned from this example?

There are no clear rules for combining different taste but there is general principles:

1. Every ingredient must have a purpose... Start with the main ingredients and think about what goes well with them. Gradually build the dish by adding new ingredients.
2. Ingredients can be mixed by matching or contrasting. In our example, the delicate flavors of veal and leison are in harmony. The sourness of the lemon contrasts with the cream.
3. When two ingredients contrast, make sure you strike a balance. Lemon juice should be just as much as needed to balance the flavor of the cream. No more no less.
4. Consider not only the dish itself, but also the other food that will be served with it.... Plan sauces and side dishes so that they harmonize, contrast with the main course and with each other, just like the ingredients in the dish itself.

Simplicity and complexity.

On the one hand, the simpler the better. Some chefs mistakenly think that it is better to add more ingredients to the dish. After all, the more ingredients in a dish, the more difficult it is to balance them. However, it is a mistake to say that simpler is always better. Browse the recipes for Chinese, Mexican, Indian cuisine, and you will realize that many recipes use a large amount of spices and flavorings. And they go well together! In a good curry, it is almost impossible to discern the flavor of all the spices used. But the dish should really work! Not everyone can create such dishes.

Classic flavor schemes

How do we learn to mix flavors? Perhaps the best place to start is by studying traditional recipes various national cuisines... Dishes that have stood the test of time. We are familiar with certain successful flavor combinations because they have been used for centuries. A combination of onions, garlic and fresh ginger is often found in Indian cuisine. A combination of ginger and soy sauce - typical for Japanese food... Garlic, tomatoes and parsley - here's a combination from Provence.

For chefs looking to create their own dishes, there is nothing better than to start by learning about classic recipes.
In the next post I will continue this topic in another application, but for now let's discuss the flavor combinations you know and love. Maybe someone wants to use the example of a veal blanket, make out another classic recipe? This will be a useful workout for all of us.

Today I invite you to digress a little from cumbersome recipes and recall the classic win-win food combinations, based on which you yourself can create as many recipes as you want. I will deliberately not write about sauces - everyone already knows that, for example, they are best friends, but a dissertation is not enough to fully disclose this topic. In the same way, I do not mention olive - and it is so clear that it goes with absolutely everything. We do not touch the salt either.

How do you use these combinations? Firstly, for its intended purpose - by combining these products in dishes, you can be sure that the result will come out worthy. Secondly, as a starting point for further reflections - for example, in a combination of blue cheese with pears, it is enough to replace the latter with figs, and it will sparkle with new colors.

I deliberately omitted some of the classic, lying on the surface combinations - I wonder how you will supplement this list.

Duck + oranges... And oranges in any form - like a seasoning, orange slices in a salad with duck, orange sauce to the breasts and so on. Why it works is unclear, but it works.

Game + juniper berries in combination, they enhance the spirit of "wildness" and "primitiveness" of the dish at times. By the way, this is just that rare case when the opposite is true - if you want to add "forests" to, say, mutton - add juniper.

Fish + fennel, and this time not seeds, but greens. Separately, I have not seen fennel greens for sale, and therefore, when buying fennel, I choose the most curly one. Fennel greens have a more delicate, delicate, aniseed flavor than dill, so they are definitely a better pair.

Melon + ham- by the way, ready-made, which seems to exist wherever ham is made and melons are planted. Other berries and fruits combined with dried ham are good too, but melon in particular.

The popular site ADME made an infographic based on this post, which I - for clarity - post here:

And now - the combinations that the readers suggested:

Cheese + mustard

Fish + lemon

Fish + horseradish

Mushrooms + basil

Mushrooms + marjoram

Eggplant + basil

Eggs + cilantro + cheese

Hercules + cheese

Eggplant + garlic

Beans + bacon

Cauliflower + cheese

Rhubarb + raisins

Potatoes + bay leaf + onion

Cheese + grapes

Lamb + cilantro

Lard + garlic

Millet + pumpkin

Sponge cake + cream

Pineapple + ham

Beets + prunes

Nuts + cinnamon + honey

Chicken + nuts

Pomegranate + lamb

Beef (minced) + basil

Pumpkin + cinnamon

Pumpkin + nutmeg

Soy sauce + honey

Pork + cloves

Rice + raisins

Pumpkin + garlic + parsley

Asparagus + eggs

Celery + apple

Onion + vinegar

Strawberry + cream

Beans + chili

Beans + nuts

Liver + apples

Chocolate + nuts

Herring + apples

Beef + eggplant

Eggs + tomatoes

Soy sauce + honey + orange peel

Cheese + dried oregano

Cabbage + cumin

Crayfish + dill seeds

Anything to add? Write in the comments!