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Science has figured out the simple reason why Indian food tastes so good
(Flickr/stu_spivack) Vindaloo.
Data researchers have analyzed 2,500 recipes of Indian food and are finally figuring out why you can never get enough chicken tikka masala.
It's all about using spices without overlapping their flavors.
Researchers Anupam Jaina, Rakhi N Kb, and Ganesh Bagler from the Indian Institute for Technology in Jodhpur, India, searched through the recipes in the largest Indian cuisine recipe database, TarlaDalal.com, to figure out why Indian food tasted so good.
It turns out the common denominator is a typical Indian dish's use of spices and flavors. It's not just how much spice is used, but how intelligently it is incorporated into the dish. Spices used in Indian dishes are much more carefully selected to produce the least amount of "flavor overlap."
“[The] more the extent of flavor-sharing between any two ingredients, [the] lesser their co-occurrence," the researchers said.
Munchies notes that this is one of the main reasons Indian and Western cuisine taste so different. Western cuisine's philosophy of putting together similar flavors in dishes is completely reversed in Indian cuisine, instead opting for the most variety of ingredients with as little overlapping flavor as possible.
So what makes the flavors meld so well in your mouth is by delicate design. Every spice and ingredient has a purpose, and they all work together in harmony to produce the taste of the dish.
"Each of the spices is uniquely placed in its recipe to shape the flavor-sharing pattern with [the] rest of the ingredients," the study says.
It's these specific roles each spice plays that gives Indian cuisine its characteristic taste.
The study covered eight major regional variations of Indian cuisine — and the finding is true for all of them.
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