Scientists have figured out what makes Indian food so delicious

Anupam Jain, Rakhi N K and Ganesh Bagler of the Indian Institute for Technology in Jodhpur have correlated the ingredients of thousands of Indian recipes with their flavor profiles. Their conclusion: Indian food, unlike European food, contains ingredients whose flavor profiles rarely overlap. "The takeaway is that part of what makes Indian food so unique is the way flavors rub up against each other," writes Roberto Ferdman of the Washington Post. "The cuisine is complicated, no doubt: the average Indian dish, after all, contains at least 7 ingredients, and the total number of ingredients observed by the researchers amounted to almost 200 out of the roughly 381 observed around the world. But all those ingredients—and the spices especially—are all uniquely important because in any single dish, each one brings a unique flavor."