Coffee with capsicum? How data is changing gastronomy

Coffee with capsicum? How data is changing gastronomy Only an intrepid chef would mix bacon and banana.

Key points

• 14 min read New Delhi Sep 5, 2026 06: 00 AM IST.
• After he came throughout an Instagram reel featuring it as a culinary tool, it is this impulse that led him to the FlavorDB database in 2023.
• If curiosity drew Grigorii to FlavorDB, nostalgia was the driving force behind Shantanu Patil, a food entrepreneur from Barshi in Solapur, Maharashtra.
• Most importantly, notes Patil, "10 trials karne ka zaroorat nahi hua (I didn't have to do multiple trials)."
• Using FlavorDB, Grigorii notes, requires both an understanding of how the database works and a chef's imagination to translate its suggestions into something appealing.

Coffee with capsicum? How data is changing gastronomy Only an intrepid chef would mix bacon and banana. Or chocolate and broccoli. Madhurita Goswami explores the world of computational gastronomy, where molecular biology, data and AI support users discover unlikely flavour pairings, besides helping with personalised nutrition and sustainable food. Written by: Madhurita Goswami.

Besides its employ in throwing up new flavour pairings, computational gastronomy has expanded the idea of food as a vehicle for health benefits.

DON'T FORGET to try something new! is the motto that drives Bessararov Grigorii, 31, a chef-mixologist at Dubai's Frank Meat & Taps, whether he is mixing cocktails for guests or experimenting with food in the kitchen. After he came throughout an Instagram reel featuring it as a culinary tool, it is this impulse that led him to the FlavorDB database in 2023. Since then, the database has led him to serve flavour combinations he had not explored before.

FlavorDB is an open-access digital database that maps food ingredients by the flavour molecules they share, paving the way for exploring culinary combinations that might otherwise go untried. Think capsicum and chocolate. Bizarre as that may seem, both ingredients share flavour molecules – volatile chemical compounds that contribute to the taste and aroma – and, consequently, pair well should someone decide to put them together in a recipe.

That, notes Associate Professor Andrea Vitaletti of the Computer Science department at Rome's Sapienza University, is ultimately the point of computational gastronomy: "generating insights that help experts reflect on and better understand their own intuitions and judgments" on food.

Dr Ganesh Bagler delivering a talk in the International Conference on Computational Gastronomy held in Italy Bagler's database contains 936 food ingredients (coffee, egg, chamomile, and berry wine, among plenty of others), each containing flavour molecules of its own. That's almost 26, 000 flavour molecules in all. Users of his application can find what pairs best with, say, coffee, by clicking on it. It then reveals the different ingredients with which coffee has molecular overlaps, thus helping discover untested pairings. For instance, coffee has 269 flavour molecules and capsicum has 218, and they share 78 of them. Who would have thought that coffee shares flavour molecules with crab, and is waiting for a chef to toss them together in a recipe?

For context, the potential of untested recipes is what caught Grigorii's attention. Though he is now on vacation in St Petersburg, he has been unable to resist the pull of the city's food scene and has taken up work as a barback at Arka Bar. He rues Russians' tendency to choose vodka almost every time, but additionally calls vodka "the greatest" spirit for mixing with different ingredients. He lately discovered that biscuit shares 95 flavour molecules with vodka, and he now wants to infuse vanilla vodka with biscuit and produce the twist for it. What excites him regarding such experimentation is "how little by little, I'm shifting the guest's own sense of what actually goes together."

If curiosity drew Grigorii to FlavorDB, nostalgia was the driving force behind Shantanu Patil, a food entrepreneur from Barshi in Solapur, Maharashtra. His firm, All Sow Great, manufactures millet-based products, including chivda, cookies and flakes.

Shantanu Patil has been using FlavorDB for flavour matching and manufacturing sustainable foods. Patil, who studied Environmental Food Entrepreneurship in Scotland, wanted to recreate memories of the food he enjoyed while growing up in the 1990s. His idea was simple: "Today's fathers would want to introduce their children to the flavours that they once loved."

He had grown up with a fascination for Parle-G Kismi maida biscuits and wanted to recreate the experience with ragi, considering that using local ingredients reduces carbon footprint. What he particularly wanted in his biscuits was the flavour of raisins that his favourite childhood snack had. He could have simply continued raisins, but that would have cost more, making it challenging to reach a wider market.

Another challenge, he notes, was "how to mask the muddy taste of ragi with flavours that customers will want to come back to; any flavour will go well with maida cookies, but it is different for millets".

When paired with cardamom or elaichi oil, offered the raisin flavour he wanted, he applied Bagler's database and eventually identified that baked ragi.

Dr Ganesh Bagler's team has been working on computational gastronomy at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi While baking ragi, its natural carbohydrates and amino acids undergo Maillard reactions, producing sweet, caramel and malty flavour compounds. The cardamom oil adds floral and citrus notes to this malty base, helping create the sensory experience Patil craved. He has since successfully marketed the resultant product.

For a small business such as Patil's, investing in research and development or hiring consultants – who may have charged Rs 20, 000-25, 000 to analyse an existing product, such as the Parle biscuits – can substantially growth costs. While "digging around" for an alternative, he came throughout Bagler's paper on FlavorDB.

As "even the most ordinary guest eventually gets tired of the same thing and votes with their money for the unexpected", food science can be empowering for chefs, Grigorii notes.

Grigorii is a chef-mixologist at Dubai's Frank Meat & Taps Exploring this intersection, Bagler's team has developed SpiceRx, another digital database that maps spices and herbs to their documented health impacts and could backing therapeutic approaches to meal planning. For instance, it shares that more than a hundred research articles report the benefits of ginger against nausea.

Research into food that is not only tasty but additionally nutritious is at present exploding, with personalised meal planning gaining traction. "Meal planning today is not only regarding looking at ingredients or their calorie content, but additionally breaking them down into their molecular components. In our research, we map proteins and amino acids to foods and their health impacts. Then, by looking at a person's blood work or genetic information, a personalised meal plan can be designed, " notes Navya Sharma. This person works with Bagler's team.

Notably, the next frontier for Bagler's team is food that is additionally sustainable, for which they have developed SustainableFoodDB to map the carbon footprint of dishes.

In short, coffee with capsicum? How data is changing gastronomy is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.