10 Ingredient Pairings That Shouldn't Work But Totally Do

Every so often you'll hear about a combination of ingredients that sends your head spinning. While it's common knowledge that people's tastes vary, it seems there are some things that should not go together. Nevertheless, there are biological reasons why someone might be inclined to enjoy a nontraditional pairing. For example there's a significant portion of the population that tastes soap when eating cilantro thanks to a single gene. Maybe there's a similar gene that could affect how open you are to eating something others find strange.

Consider also that some unexpected food pairings come from a place of cultural heritage. Meals like South Africa's bobotie, made with egg custard or curried ground beef, encourage mixing and matching different flavors and textures. Finally, there is the factor of what food people have available to them at a given time. Economic hardship exists all over the world, often closer to home than you might expect. When a good grocery shopping run is not guaranteed, people will resort to whatever they can stomach. When you have to make do, you can stumble across some surprising and strange combinations that just end up working. However these strange pairings came about, there are some that invariably just work.

Honey and pickles are two of the most shelf-stable, long-lasting foods out there. You can pickle anything and everything to preserve it, and under the right conditions pickles can last for years in storage. Even that can't hold a candle to honey's life expectancy though, as jars found in an Egyptian tomb contained edible honey that was at least 3,000 years old. For two such long lasting ingredients, they were rarely consumed together until fairly recently. Pairing the two sometimes involved adding honey to the brining mixture to make a honeyed pickle. Both have also been used to amplify your fried chicken, using a pickle brine for the meat and a nice honey drizzle for the breading.

Thanks to the recent trend of charcuterie boards, pickles and honey have been finding a place next to each other more frequently, leading to direct flavor experimentation. If you're wondering what makes this odd pair of ingredients work so well together, it's the way the two flavors create a counter-harmony with each other. The sweetness of the honey helps offset the acid tang of a strong pickle, while the saltiness of the brine elevates the natural flavors in honey. Each type of honey comes with its own subtle notes, thanks to the pollen and flowers consumed by the bees that create it. The blending of sweet and salty flavors allows these small nuances to really shine.

You've certainly heard the saying that opposites attract. Never has this been more exemplified than in the pairing of hot sauce and ice cream. While ice cream is no stranger to being made with unexpected ingredients, the concept of pouring a spicy sauce on top of a cool and creamy treat rings out as strange. It makes one wonder what possible benefits vinegar, spice, and sugar can generate together.

It turns out that savory toppings on ice cream are far more common than you might expect. Everything from potato chips to chili crisp has been touted as an excellent topping for the frozen dessert. Hot sauce stops seeming so strange when you see how other people are fulfilling their wildest possible cravings. When you consider that milk is often used as a way to soothe your mouth after eating hot sauce, drizzling the spicy stuff onto a dairy-based treat starts to make more sense.

The dairy in ice cream helps naturally dull the pain of the capsaicin and allows you to fully taste the flavors that get packed into a good hot sauce, since too much heat renders a flavorful sauce meaningless. Try pairing the flavors of the sauce and ice cream for extra compatibility. For example, a citrus chili hot sauce drizzled over chocolate ice cream evokes a spicy chocolate orange, and a mango habanero sauce on a delicate coconut ice conjures up a tropical heat.

We've been focusing on directly opposing ingredients so far with sweet, savory, hot, and cold foods. The pairing of dark chocolate and pickles breaks with this trend, as both ingredients can be considered savory on their own. While pickles trend toward acidic and sour and dark chocolate tends toward bitter and smooth, this pairing may not be as wild as you think, and has been featured in novelty food stalls at local carnivals for years.

There are many reasons to love both of these ingredients. Dark chocolate is the healthier of the chocolate options, with telltale signs of quality that anyone can spot. Pickles, aside from being an extremely versatile addition to many dishes, are also full of fiber and vitamins A and K.

Whether dipped or drizzled, dark chocolate with pickles is a flavor sensation. A sprinkling of sea salt can amplify the affair even more, giving the duo a rather professional finish. Imagine if you will, the subtle sweetness and earthy tones of dark chocolate giving way to the classic crunch and juiciness of a pickle. It has to be experienced to be truly understood. It seems like those food stalls at carnivals are always just a little ahead of the curve.

Oatmeal can be considered on par with the Southern staple, grits, so it should come as no surprise that it takes very little effort to transform oatmeal, a dish normally associated with breakfast and cookies, into a savory meal. Like its companion, grits, oatmeal can be spruced up with relatively low effort, since oats hold other flavors very well. Oatmeal on its own can be decidedly delicious, but pairing it with cheese really makes a meal out of it.

Most recipes that speak to this pairing use shredded cheese for ease of mixing, but the truth is that oatmeal can work with even the most surprising cheeses or cheese substitutes. In fact, using a liquid cheese, like the kind you'd get in an aerosol can, mixes in more easily than shredded varieties. Ultimately, mixing cheese into your oatmeal is a quick way to enhance the protein content of the dish, and add a flash of color into an otherwise drab dining experience. It makes the mundane more fun, and the flavor profiles of the earthy oats and the sharp bite of the cheese end up contrasting to bring a unique and playful taste.

Summer is the season for backyard barbecues, burgers, hot dogs, chips, soda, and of course watermelon. While watermelon and mustard have always existed mere feet away from each other in this particular setting, it wasn't until TikTok user @yayayayummy posted about this pairing that people really considered combining the two. If you're still on the fence about the pairing despite its viral success, you're not the only one. Quite a few people who tried the concoction seemed almost confused by what they were experiencing. 

To be fair, the sharp tang of yellow mustard and the mellow juicy fruit flavor of watermelon aren't exactly holding hands the way that chocolate and caramel do. Still, the combination is refreshing, especially if you take the time to choose the tastiest watermelon at the store, allowing those sweet fruit notes to be accentuated by the saltiness of the mustard. Practically everyone, including the artist Lizzo, needed to take a second bite to really understand what they were tasting. If you're a big fan of mustard or watermelon, this combination will absolutely work for you. If you're ambivalent on both, it's still worth a shot, as such a distinct combination will certainly be a new experience.

Some dishes share a name across regions, but are made differently when compared. The combination of canned tuna fish, boxed mac 'n' cheese, and a can of creamed corn is known on a small part of the East Coast as a poor man's tuna casserole. If you were to Google the dish, most of the other recipes call for cream of mushroom soup instead of creamed corn, or add in various spices and vegetables. However, the triple threat of tuna, mac 'n' cheese, and creamed corn is the simplest version of this unique combo.

The recipe is super straightforward. Just make a pot of mac 'n' cheese, open and drain a can of tuna (preferably Ortiz, the store-bought canned tuna you should always have on your shopping list), and open a can of creamed corn. Add the tuna and creamed corn to the pot of mac 'n' cheese, and crack in some black pepper if you're feeling frisky. Mix it all together and serve hot.

The flavor is bold and creamy, with the notes of the mac 'n' cheese blending with the creamed corn to help mitigate the sometimes overwhelmingly fishy taste of tuna. You'll taste the tuna enough to enjoy that it's there, and still reap the full benefits of eating the omega-3 rich fish.

Some foods and ingredients come from surprising and humble beginnings. Lobster was once considered a poor man's food because of its prevalence among poor fishing families, potato chips were invented in an attempt to spite a difficult customer, and the banana mayonnaise sandwich became a cultural staple of the American South thanks to the Great Depression.

Necessity being the mother of invention, the banana mayonnaise sandwich was most likely made as a last resort. It's hard to imagine the two ingredients would seem a natural pair otherwise. During the Great Depression and the following few decades, practically anything and everything was shoved between two slices of bread. If it could put meat on your bones and quiet a hungry stomach, it was consumed.

The complementary creaminess of bananas and mayonnaise ended up clicking for quite a lot of people. It's just another example of how a salty, savory condiment like mayonnaise can help elevate and accentuate a sweet ingredient like bananas. In fact, mayonnaise is the ingredient that sets Southern banana sandwiches apart from all the rest. While some people prefer their bread untoasted, the vast majority seem to prefer the support and heat of toasted white bread to really help their Southern sandwich stand out.

Lack of choice leads to necessary and sometimes fruitful experimentation in the kitchen. The concept of opening your cupboards to see what is available and dumping it all into a pot in the hopes it works is a familiar feeling to many. That is where this particular blend of ingredients was born. There is no true recipe that has ever been written out, and the closest our research was able to uncover comes from TikTok user @clintonsvatos. From the same corner of eastern USA that brought you tuna, mac 'n' cheese, and creamed corn comes Doggy Chowder.

Doggy Chowder is simple. First, make a pot of chicken noodle soup, then add a can of creamed corn. Heat up the mixture and begin to cook the instant noodles in the creamed corn, mixing as needed. Then, chop up approximately two hot dog wieners per serving and add them to the pot. Make sure you're using the best hot dogs at the store, as they really give the recipe a kick.

In a serious case of don't knock it until you try it, together these three ingredients make a savory chowder that would be tough to beat on the same budget. You get all your essential vegetables and a comforting flavor with the soup, a smooth and creamy texture from the corn, and a versatile protein with the hot dogs. It's easy on the wallet and your time.

No one is quite sure where the trend of pairing sharp cheddar cheese with a slice of apple pie originated. People claim it began in the American South, Yorkshire, England, or courtesy of Marie Callender. No matter where this tradition originates it survives to this day. If you've never heard of pairing cheese with apple pie, this combination of foods may not sound appetizing, but it remains an iconic pairing, often accompanied by the phrase "an apple pie without the cheese is like a kiss without the squeeze."

While most would pair their pie today with a scoop of ice cream to complement the sweet nature of the dessert, deciding to eat it with a slice of sharp white cheddar speaks to the contrasting flavor profiles found in a modern day apple pie. The savory flavor of the spices used in the pie filling, like cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, allspice, and even ginger, are enhanced when pairing it with the strong and decidedly salty flavor of the sharp white cheddar. It's very much like pairing a pickle with chocolate, or mayonnaise with banana — savory and sweet. Even those who use secret ingredients to make their apple pie filling superior can benefit from this tasty combination.

Everyone has their secrets for making the best scrambled eggs. Some use butter in the pan and nothing else, while others load their egg mixture with various dairy products before cooking. The list of the many ways to cook scrambled eggs could go on forever. Once the eggs are plated, there is a large contingent out there who reach not for salt or pepper, but for ketchup to garnish their fluffy yellow breakfast.

A glance online shows the topic of eggs with ketchup is hotly debated. Many believe the two ingredients simply do not go well together, while those who choose to eat their eggs in this manner claim that no one is giving it a chance. Both ketchup and eggs are savory. Ketchup is notably vinegary, and acidic, though it's often balanced out with a sugar. Eggs on the other hand are fluffy, creamy, and taste like ... well ... eggs!

Eating scrambled eggs with ketchup may seem strange but somehow it just works. Perhaps the acidity of the ketchup gives the eggs something it lacks, and some claim it adds an umami taste to the dish. Or perhaps you just don't like the flavor of eggs very much and are using them as an excuse to eat ketchup. It's also worth noting that tomatoes are a common addition to omelets and breakfast plates, so it's not that far-fetched.