With the fear of breaking ground in an endless rabbit hole here, I’m gonna go down the route of the more complex flavours and aromatic compounds. This of course is in contrast to the simpler five base tastes we often discuss in drinks making with a focus on sweet/sour/bitter.
Instead of discussing opinions here, the question is simply that of available resources for discovering connections in compounds across ingredients.
When I did World Class last year I used flavordb (linked below) quite a bit but I’m also aware of the Canadian FooDB (also linked).
Are there any other major sources that have a half decent UX for quickly searching ingredients in the context of food & drinks flavour pairings?
Similarly, but slightly different, there’s tidy tables of data where flavour compounds are specifically listed in the context of how they’re perceived in drinks and how they affect other aspects. One such example is the later part of the Bubbles book by the guys at Crossroads Consultancy which lists by compound and then which ingredients they’re typically found in.