Companion foods-can you think of any?

I love food yet I am very conservative. I always use some kind of base mix within my cookery. If I am cooking Western European I'll use the standard known as "mirepoix" comprising carrots-celery-onion topped with parsley-thyme-bay-rosemary - sold in simpler form in supers here as "Suppengrün".

If I am making a pasta sauce it'll be garlic-olive oil-tomato-basil then whatever I have thrown in, topped with Parmesan after.

if its a pesto it might be basil-garlic-oilive oil-pine nuts. I sometimes drop in walnuts if I've forgotten the nuts.

So you get the drift. Any others I haven't thought of yet?

Anchovy, olives, capers, toms, chilli and garlic (olive oil too of course)

There are a ton of classic flavour marriages; little rules that you can follow, that even if you do not have the exquisitely trained palate of a French wine master, or the culinary knowledge of Michel Roux, will improve your food enormously.

When people "experiment" with food, they might make something OK, but might well make an absolute monstrosity of a dish. The chances of successfully making something half decent increase dramatically if you try and stay within certain boundaries, and trying to keep note of certain flavor marriages can help enormously. A simple example is a bit of boring old chicken? Classic partner? Mushrooms perhaps. A combo that exists in many cultures. Even Pot Noodle aren't stupid enough to ignore the chicken and mushroom combination.
Tomato and basil, smoked trout and horseradish, eggs and spinach, beef and carrot, scallops and black pudding, chicken and tarragon, and as the Germans all know, cabbage and pork. The dishes that tend to stand the test of time are generally based around some sort of classic affinity of flavours.

One of the reasons lots of people get into French cuisine is because it is often very much based around tried and tested combinations; not just ingredients cooked together, but the classic accompaniments to certain foodstuffs too.
Lamb with garlic and rosemary works super well of course, but alot of English people don't know that, being used to their mother serving up a bowl of rather acerbic mint sauce with the sunday lamb, and so they'll often experience a culinary orgasm the first time they are on holiday in France, and eat a gigot of lamb, studded with a monstrous amount of garlic, and long woody stems of wild rosemary.

Far too many people, and chefs, waste stupid amounts of time trying to create new food marriages. Get's up my nose a bit really. Are they really arrogant enough to think that after hundreds of years of people cooking, that they are going to find some undiscovered gem? A combination of flavours that makes you go, "wow!". Not gonna happen much is it. I mean, chilli flavoured chocolate is a relatively new thing in Europe, and has that wow factor when you first try it, but FFS, those 2 flavours were being used together years ago in other parts of the world.

My point of view? If you think you've discovered a new flavour combination, "something that shouldn't work but does!!", then it's likely to be either something that been invented before, or something that tastes utterly shit, but your tastebuds are too useless to notice.

The mighty Cheese & Onion sandwich!!

Thing is these classic marriges become cliches, so you see them all over when you look. Agree with Don Riina about eggs and spinach (always with white pepper for me) and tomato and basil (with some lovely creamy mozeralla). I got a book at college years back Le Repertoire De La Cuisine which has loads of this stuff listed. If a mix of 2 or more ingredients, done a certain way, has a French name chances are it will taste good.

Steak and truffle butter.
Carrots and sage.
Broccoli and sesame oil.

There's many, many, more....

K

Kuzzer do you know of any webpages that list them?

Not as such. Have you tried Googling "foods that go together" or "companion foods"?

It's forty years of cooking experience that's given me my list....when I've got some spare time, I'll list some more down.

K

p.s. raspberries and mint

Peanut butter and banana; peanut butter and honey; peanut butter and grape jam; peanut butter and apples; peanut butter and marshmallow fluff; the list could go on and on...

Cocaine and Waffles

Blue cheese and walnuts.

Cream and brandy (yep, pretty much out of fashion now, but there's a reason for their previous popularity!).

Ham and melon.

Strawberries and pepper.

Mackerel and gooseberries.

Pork and sage.

Lamb and rosemary.

Damn. Made myself hungry. Dinner time!

Pork and apples.

Classic flavour combinations?

Vodka, tomato juice, Worcester sauce, Tabasco sauce, salt and pepper.



Bloody hell!

You're pushin' it, hellfire.

Get up on this: Beef Jerky and whatever else I taste off my hand as I'm shoveling it into my mouth. Match made in heaven.

Edit: Honestly I make a sickeningly good Cheez-it-crusted chicken. Basic, maybe, but always a crowd pleaser.

Good English cheddar, beetroot, pickle onions, marijuana, jalapeños, bottle of red, Jacob's cream crackers!


HF99's lunch described earlier.

One word.................Green Chili! Ok, maybe two.
I cant find the right recipe to save my life!
And im NOT talking about salsa...........eastern'ers
Im talking about a soup, that is a topping, that is a meal! Maybe you can call it a stew!
I think everybody who comes from the Midwest (America) knows what im talking about!
Green Chili is a concoction of flavors that appeal to everybody! Comes in mild, medium, and hot.
I recommend though, if you are a Veteran like me, order the HOT! But if you cant handle spicy, then maybe not!

Thats my 2 cents!
DBL