A few minutes ago, I noticed that dill pickles and buttered bread create, when eaten alternately in a repeated fashion, the reciprocal desire to eat more of the other. Strange. I’m not sure why this particular pairing causes this response, but it suddenly occurred to me that this wasn’t the first time such a phenomenon has presented itself. And apparently (once again), I’m not alone.
Once I recovered from the feeding frenzy (that is, I ran out of one component), I thought about this a little further. Given my experience alone, it would seem that there are potentially numerous culinary convergences that generate similar feedback loops. A detached part of my mind wonders how many pairings there are; perhaps there’s a theorem to predict their distribution. Perhaps they appear random, but reveal a subtle underlying truth.
Nah; they’re just tasty. But not random, certainly; note the following examples, which are surely not a closed set. Some are obvious, and probably cliche, but this doesn’t mean they’re any less true.
- Dill pickles and buttered bread
- Pizza and Coca-Cola
- Chocolate and peanut butter (or just eat an assload of Reese’s)
- Spicy Doritos and regular pretzels
- Cheese and crackers
- Chips/Corn chips and dip/salsa/nacho cheese
I’ll try to update the list as I discover more weirdness. Now, you might be tempted to think that it’s just the classic sweet-salty dichotomy that adds momentum to this neuro-culinary engine, but at least the above list would suggest otherwise.
The last entry contains the combination from the xkcd comic in which Munroe coins the use of the term “Delicious Cycle“, which pretty much says it all.
Posted by j
