Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Test your taste buddies

Posted by Jonathan Bender on Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 10:30 AM

click to enlarge food.combination.011310.jpg

If you don't have any ideas for dinner tonight, you can use the Web site Tastebuddi.es to either rule out a number of options or stimulate your oven approach. 

It's a weird site -- the "Flavour Combination Inspiration" has you click a large blue button, which says "stir it up." You're then presented with two randomly generated foods for which you can give a thumbs up (great) or thumbs down (gross). After you vote, you can see how that combination ranks among visitors to the site and share it via Twitter. As to the site's mission, the homepage has the following:

Here at tastebuddies, we're searching for the most interesting and unusual culinary combinations. If you've never tried strawberries and balsamic vinegar or mozzarella cheese with ice-cream then you haven't lived. We hope this site will inspire you to experiment with flavours.

In subsequent clicks I was offered: sorbet and cream cheese (#6823

ranked combo); skittles and chorizo (#6900); plum and tuna (#3995);

Krispy Kremes and caviar (#6905); and raspberry and chestnuts

(#3447). I only chose great for one of those combinations. The current top taste combination is sweet popcorn and peanut butter, while the worst is pickles and curry powder. The most popular combination will be announced on February 26. 

For what it's worth, your palate may not align with those of the other tasters. The site was created by Poke -- a branding and advertising company out of London -- as part of what it calls a "hack day," where employees design a viral online site or application organized around a theme -- in this case, food.

Regardless of whether it offers you inspiration for your meal (pumpkin and chives) or potential new homemade ice cream flavors (sugar and coffee), it is one of the finest food-related time sucks I've discovered in a while. The randomness and addictive button-pushing abilities make this a gross-out slot machine with the potential for a jackpot every time.
 
[Image via Flickr: gamene]

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