What Neuroscience Can Tell Us About Our Obsession With Food Combinations?

Have you ever wondered why food mashups are so common? It seems like new goods are introduced to outweird one another, ranging from the well-known (peanut butter and jelly or chicken and waffles) to the strange (pickles and ice cream or hot chicken wing oreos (eek!).

It’s true that some combinations taste and sound better than others, but our appreciation of various combinations extends beyond flavor, according to Matt Johnson, a professor at the Hult International Business School in San Francisco who has spent the last 11 years studying the connection between food and neuroscience. The tongue’s ability to taste is merely the tip of the iceberg. The force of expectation and anticipation is what underlies the fixation on food pairings.

Together with Prince Ghuman, another professor at Hult in neuroscience marketing, the pair co-authored the book Allure: The Neuroscience of Consumerism as they explore how neuroscience affects consumer experience.

In the case of dining, the duo described anticipation as being “intrinsically rewarding to the brain.” Say when a sommelier pairs a bottle of Cotes du Rhone with your lamb dish, “the mental machinery of anticipation kicks in. Without a single taste of either, you are already experiencing pleasure.”

Your degree of enjoyment can be influenced by the ideas of expectation and anticipation since some combinations are more predictable than others. For example, Johnson says it’s more predictable to combine red wine with red meat than, say, a Nutella lasagna. You don’t have any background information on Nutella and lasagna, unlike the wine pairing. Even more enjoyable than the wine combination is the anticipation.

Notably, in recent years, some meal combos have gained popularity. For instance, the neuroscientists claimed that Cronuts worked because the familiarity of both things and the strangeness of the combo were well balanced, whereas Korean tacos and sushirittos offer an additional dose of balanced novelty. “By combining two liquids rather than the usual liquid and solid pairings, whiskey and beer double up the novelty,” Ghuman remarked.

The “almighty cronut” has already passed its expiration date, in contrast to some timeless food and beverage pairings like wine and steak or sushi and sake. But, Johnson said, there is a lesson to be learnt from this once-extremely-hot food craze.