The Incompatible Food Triad

Re:The Incompatible Food Triad by gweinberg on Saturday December 17, 2016 @05:46PM (#13203169)

It seems to me this is more a chemistry question than a math question. Ignoring the subjectivity element, why is it ever the case that two things that taste good separately taste bad together? Maybe it's because they have a chemical reaction. So maybe what we should be looking for is chemicals that don't react as a pair (or react so slowly you don't notice), but will react in the presence of a catalyst which is pretty inert by itself. So I think one ingredient should be Platinumschlager (which is like Goldschlager except stupider).

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Re:The Incompatible Food Triad by Mathnerd314 on Saturday December 17, 2016 @07:05PM (#13203508)

There are multi-component reactions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-component_reaction

The Hantzsch reaction looks promising (producing pyridines which are apparently pretty nasty); from looking at which foods contain which compounds, the obvious ones are cinnamon (cinnamaldehyde), apples (malic acid, which links to keto acid, which is linked from β-keto ester... I didn't take organic chemistry), and aged cheese (glutamate, a nitrogen donor).

Apple-cinnamon and apples+cheese are both well-known pairings. The only question is cinnamon cheese, and surprisingly enough there's a review: http://www.thekitchn.com/cheese-review-trader-joes-cinn-1307.... It's apparently pretty good. But, when eating the cheese with the apple, "the cinnamon flavor didn't really enhance the cheese, ironically enough, and so I opted to eat the cheese separately from the fruit." I guess that means this question is solved...?

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