What makes indian cuisine unique

Many Asian cuisines have been shown to belie the trend by favouring dishes with ingredients that don't overlap in flavour. And Indian food, in particular, is one of the most powerful counter-examples.

By submitting your email you are agreeing to Fairfax Media's terms and conditions and privacy policy. Researchers at the Indian Institute for Technology in Jodhpur crunched data on several thousand recipes from a popular online recipe site called TarlaDalal. They broke each dish down to its ingredients, and then compared how often and heavily ingredients share flavour compounds. The researchers examined several thousand recipes, which used a total of ingredients.

They looked at how much the underlying flavour compounds overlapped in single dishes and discovered something very different from Western cuisines. Indian cuisine tended to mix ingredients whose flavours don't overlap at all. In other words, the more overlap two ingredients have in flavour, the less likely they are to appear in the same Indian dish. More specifically, many Indian recipes contain cayenne, the basis of curry powder that is in dishes like red curry, green curry, or massaman curry.

And when a dish contains cayenne, the researchers found, it's unlikely to have other ingredients that share similar flavours. The same can be said of green bell pepper, coriander and garam masala, which are nearly as ubiquitous in Indian cuisine. Milk, butter, bread and rice, meanwhile - all of which are hallmarks of Western cuisine - were found to be associated with just the opposite: flavour pairings that match. More than 40, subscribers can't be wrong.

A prime example is cayenne, a basis for curry. When cayenne is added to dishes, the researchers found that these are likely to use ingredients with less flavors in common. In similar vein are green bell pepper, coriander and garam masala. Work it out. Tibi is a science journalist and co-founder of ZME Science. He writes mainly about emerging tech, physics, climate, and space.

In his spare time, Tibi likes to make weird music on his computer and groom felines. Home Science Chemistry. What makes indian food so unique — a molecular explanation After they analyzed more than 2, traditional Indian recipes down to the molecular levels, scientists now think they know what makes Indian cuisine so appealing.

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Terms applied. Book a Table. Top 4 Factors which make Indian food unique. Here are some factors which make Indian food special and unique: Diversity: Well, of course. Book A Table. Special requests. Book Now Close. This is a notice for cookies. By using this website you agree to the use of cookies for analytics, personalised content and ads.