aaron c beals

came across this handy site the other day. it has a pretty small catalog of foods and spices (and given the limited catalog, the choice of “Litchi” as an axis point is a little odd), but the principle is pretty cool. the idea is that given any axis point, you should be able to find pairings to other foods, drinks, or spices.

the good: the site is very simple yet elegant in design. if you have a decent understanding of cooking and pairing of food, it’s a good tool to help you explore alternatives you may not have considered otherwise.

the bad: the diagrams are images — rather than an interactive Flash animation, as has been done at other sites — and seem to be pre-created rather than dynamically generated. also, the diagrams don’t label the edges, so it’s hard to tell what the nature of a certain pairing is (though you can guess from the food items on the far end of the edge.