Maybe HN could apply itself to finding solutions to George Hart's Incompatible Food Triad. (George is father to maths/art youtube superstar Vi Hart and himself an amazing maths/artist.)

After twenty-five years of thinking about this problem I decided to write a web page about it. Here is the problem:

Can you find three foods such that all three do not go together (by any reasonable definition of foods "going together") but every pair of them does go together?

The page is extremely funny, but also serious - my favourite combination.

http://www.georgehart.com/triad.html

> That this thought experiment merits a web page is really quite astounding. That I decided to write you an e-mail telling you that is even more astounding. And that I don't drink myself stupid following this exchange will be the most astounding non-event in the history of mankind. I am baffled, shattered, and destroyed by the mind-numbing pointlessness of The Incompatible Food Triad experiment. It makes me ill. I promise you, sir, I will never again be the same after witnessing the sheer mind-blowing uselessness of that puzzle. My life as I know it, is over. I once was lost, but then I was found, and then I found your website linked to Wikipedia and now I am lost again, irretrievably lost in a dark maze, a pitch dark maze with the Minotaur of Bafflement hunting me down. I shall not escape him, I shall not escape my doom. No, good sir, instead I fall - far and away, even from myself I fall until I slam forcefully into the cold steel floor of my own mind, crippled and alone, dead to all sensation. I am gone, sir, and I shall never return.

Loved the page, myself.

Indeed, the pb/hotdog/banana experiment was performed with this problem in mind. Though, nobody thinks that banana and hotdog is worth considering... until you roast the banana... (and, yeah, still questionable)

This deserves it's own post

Done! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25995719

Wow I was with you until strawberry and shrimp.

Korean marinades use pears for kalbi iirc.

PB on a hot dog isn't crazy tho the addition of banana is slightly more odd.

But my god. Strawberry and shrimp. Especially that very rich full bodied shrimp would be awful with strawberry! Gross!

And yet the brain is ticking, if you chose sweeter prawns that were very fresh and steamed them, I could see them going with milder raw strawberries. At least not contradicting them. Maybe some balsamic can bridge the two.

Here's a langoustine and summer berries dish I had back when restaurants were open. https://www.instagram.com/p/CCVEto6FUMn/

you're on the right track, using a sweeter shrimp, in this case a langoustine, small red shrimps would work too. lightly cooked or seared. salt, fat and depth comes from the pork belly to provide a base layer. and instead of balsamic as an acid to bind, they used a lemon beurre blanc with lemon thyme oil to add even more zing.

balsamic glaze should work too, strawberry and balsamic vinegar is amazing combination.

> And yet the brain is ticking...

Well met, friend! After writing that, I started reconsidering how it could be done. I arrived at a sibling comment's observation, that ceviche could be a better approach. Not so far from the balsamic! Onion in the ceviche may help (on second thought, it might be another strike against the strawberries). But no, the original incident was a grilled skewer -- yikes.

One flavor that I've found to be a a very flexible "strange bridge" is mustard. But... ye gods... that'd only turn the retch up to 11.

Oh yes - ceviche is a fantastic shout. If you want onions, maybe red onions will pair better with the strawberry?

I do enjoy this side of cooking, it's basically a form of problem solving where the pay off is delicious food!

Happy I'm not the only one out there that enjoys pushing the limits. Although I am also at other times the staunchest of traditionalists...

shrimp is usually combined with lemon, or that radish stuff right?

yeah I'd definitely try balsamic, or maybe sour apples, or orange marmalade? Shrimp, mayo, apple is definitely a thing right? Is the cream part required? What about a citrusy balsamic shrimp banana crepe, with a light sugar dusting? ok weird but I'd love to try it

Riffing on ceviche seems like a plausible path to something edible.

Yeah, I was about to say, I've had mango salsa ceviche that was pretty killer. Strawberry isn't a leap.

Yeah, don't do orange juice on cereal, either.

The one thing I know to avoid combining with orange juice is strongly smoked salt fish. It changes the taste of orange juice to bitter.

Then why do I love salad with orange sections and smoked herring... possibly fennel too.

I am so delighted by the responses this thread has generated

Rooibos tea works on some cereals. You can think of that as a sort of North American hipster version of chazuke.

Of course cookies can be dunked in milk. Once on a plane, sometime around her first birthday IIRC, my daughter tried dunking Biscoff in Diet Coke. I was so proud of her because clearly she was a culinary genius! Until I tried it.

I LOVE orange juice on Wheat Chex. So, I don't think this warning applies to me.

I once browned some ground beef and cookie dough together and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'm with this on flavor, I'd add cardamom or some other umbellifer... what was the meat/cookie interface like?

It came together as a unified blob.

> never mix strawberries and shrimp

fried prawns in mango puree and sweet mayo is a fairly popular dish in parts of china. prawns in honey wasabi is another sweet variant.

The issue with strawberries, I think, is the tart+fish (or in the case of that one misguided experiment, grilling the mess may have been the ultimate culprite). I would be all over prawns in honey wasabi.

try peanut butter, banana, sriracha over greek yogurt with granola... sounds weird, but I eat it for breakfast all the time

One day I decided to make a cobbler with thanksgiving leftovers... turning it into a "shepherds pie" thing but as a turkey cobbler.. that thing was delicious.

I love taking and combining familiar concepts in unfamiliar ways... it's at least one way to pass time during the pandemic...

> One day I decided to make a cobbler with thanksgiving leftovers...

Marvelous. I did an "all-in-one" dish for a winter potluck one year. Ham, cranberries, and (a few) brussels sprouts, in a base of potatos au gratin. It got a few weird looks, but there were no leftovers.

I call this "the holy spirit of snacking", and I trace it back at least to my grandfather who always liked a good lox-and-cream-cheese-on-chocolate-donut sandwich.

I also got the peanut-butter-and-mozzarella-on-english-muffin sandwich from him, which I legitimately enjoy.

French fries with vanilla ice cream is somewhat popular in Germany.

It is in the United States too – mostly vanilla milkshakes, though (Wendy's frosty, In-N-Out shake, etc)

It is? I’ve never heard of this or seen it anywhere, and I’ve lived here all my life. Possibly a regional thing?

dunno, classic thing at the Freibad Kiosk of my childhood

Nobody ever accepted me putting chocolate chips in my tuna subs.

One of the worst things ever featured on the UK version of Kitchen Nightmares was someone who was serving up chocolate and prawn smoothies in sunny spain...

Just watched that and was about to comment the same. I wish there was some kind of quantification to this stuff, or at least a subjective graph demonstrating the different aspects of foods and which ones are complementary: flavor, texture, color, smell, etc. if we had this kind of quantified space to explore, i think we could programmatically find some bizarre combinations that taste amazing

Flavour thesaurus is very good, if quite small relative to what I think you want (or I might be projecting -- it's what I want). Would be a good start for seeding the graph anyway, it's a great book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flavour_Thesaurus?wprov=sf...

I don't think there's as much science to it as he implies but this is how heston blumenthal cooks.

I genuinely can't find the book (it's not modernist cuisine) but he recommended a book which is sort of part chemistry textbook part cookbook.

I think you are talking about to “On Food and Cooking” by Harold McGee. It is a very good book and I do refer to my copy from time to time.

Almost definitely, thanks.

A high-school friend once made a chicken milkshake.

Pot may have been involved.

It was just a dish of prawns served with chocolate sauce. Ramsay made the smoothie and fed it to the blindfolded chef to demonstrate the combination doesn't work.

I've watched that show way too much...

> I've watched that show way too much...

The cultural differences between the UK and US versions are really something

I'm sure reality TV hosted by Gordon Ramsay and whoever's his American counterpart isn't a great example of either's culture, nevermind basis on which to compare them.

Though I haven't seen either. I have seen both original UK & US The Office, which after the first few episodes of the latter (which just uncomfortably rip off the former, making the same jokes but poorly IMO) are each good in their own right, and definitely highlight differences between the respective television cultures, even if not actual society too.

Gordon Ramsay is the host of both that's why it's a good point of comparison - American TV is violent and usually emasculation-porn, the UK version of the show is often very gentle and doesn't feature extremely loud musical cues to tell the audience when to gasp and when to salivate. The media set and follow trends.

Just to pick up the point about the office - the office US is really good, but the office is UK is an order of magnitude deeper. The US version hits it's stride long after they ran out of UK-material.

They do serve as analogues of the countries they're set in, but ultimately the office UK is much more of character study of Brent and is generally really uniquely shot and directed. Michael Scott is funny, Brent is truly tragic.

Also one thing that really annoys me about US television, is that they clearly assume their audience is too stupid to get many gags, i.e. the office UK is full of clever little gags that don't really make you laugh but really sell the format and location of the show, even if you don't notice them.

To prove "British" can be shit too -> Afterlife is rubbish.

Just thinking about it makes me want to floss my teeth!

You should see what Sweden has done to pizza.