Different sizes, shapes, proportions and textures in food will not only be more visually interesting, they will appeal to the taste buds too. The shape of food tends to work better if it’s complimentary, rather than uniform in appearance. Which means a plate of long, narrow foods such as, French fries, string beans and frankfurters could look a bit, well – long. And when serving something smooth and soft such as soup or a creamy pudding, it’s good to add a counter-accent with something crunchy like a crisp salad, crusty rolls or crumbly biscuits.

“While a plain-tasting food can be superbly set off with a tangy sauce, aim for a homogeneous meal. It usually works better than a hodgepodge of different cultures on a plate. So if you’re cooking Indian, make all the courses Indian. And unless you’re being deliberately experimental, don’t serve pasta with chicken curry, or moussaka with Thai noodles.”

The temperature of food is another consideration. Convention and cultural preferences aside, the flavour of foods that have little natural smell, are enhanced by heating; whereas foods with strong aromas like smoked fish, may become overpowering at high temperatures. So be wary about which cold and hot foods can happily share a plate – “sizzling fajitas with cold potato salad anyone?”

Pair up a wine and food from the same region and you’ll be on the right track

What food goes with what wine is another common conundrum. Get the right balance of 'weight' between food and wine, so that neither overpowers the other, and you’ll have a lovely meal. However, serving a heavy French red wine with seafood would completely dominate the delicate flavours of the dish. And a rich, meaty stew would drown out the bouquet of a neutral white wine.

Does the ‘two ingredients are company but three are incompatible’ formula really work?

There’s another interesting theory on the table at the moment – The Incompatible Food Triad problem. The definition reads like something off a school maths paper, but essentially it’s this:

Three different spices or other main ingredients do not go together in some recipes, yet any pair of them is fine. Discuss…

An example of this “going together” theory is: chocolate, chicken and honey. This gives us the delicious sounding honey-butter chicken; a Mexican dish of chicken with chocolate sauce and all kinds of desserts made with chocolate and honey. But…chocolate-honey chicken sounds, and probably is, revolting.

Another 3-food incompatibility combo could be: potatoes, mayonnaise and cabbage. If you can think of any others, post them here on the forum. This theory could at any rate, make for an interesting new game to break the ice at dinner parties.

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Moving on from friend and foe food combinations to the food combining diet many swear by – the Hay phenomenon. It’s commonly believed that the human stomach is well adapted to digest any number of different foods at the same time. Since 1911 the early pioneer, Dr William Hay couldn’t disagree more. A deluge of diet books eulogizing his beliefs then followed his theory.

Food combining, often referred to as the Hay diet, is one of the few dieting methods that most health and fitness specialists recommend, simply because there is little chance of adverse effects such as headaches or nausea. And it has been shown to help people with food intolerances, digestive and weight problems,

The Hay diet is about avoiding eating certain foods together because this is supposedly bad for your digestion

Protein needs an acidic environment to be digested properly, so the theory suggests that meat shouldn’t be eaten together with starchy foods that require an alkaline environment. The easiest way to practice the programme is to have one meal each day, which is protein with salads or vegetables, and another meal, which is carbohydrate, with vegetables and salad.

“In some cases, combining certain foods does enhance the absorption of nutrients. For example, eating oranges (high in vitamin C) with steak helps to increase the absorption of iron from the meat.”

One of the main problems with the Hay diet is that a protein-only meal or a carbohydrate-only meal can be very unsatisfying and leave you craving for more. Plus, this system can be deficient in nutrients, including calcium, zinc, and vitamins D and B12.

Some foods eaten together could help fight cancer

Of course, food combining isn’t just about the Hay diet. On a more positive note, researchers have shown that eating certain foods together, such as chicken and broccoli or salmon and watercress could help fight cancer. It’s to do with the two nutrients called sulforaphane and selenium, which make the foods up to 13 times more powerful in attacking cancer together than they are alone. The discovery could mean it could be possible to design special cancer-fighting foods or diets in the future.

Discover food harmony for inner peace, Virudha ahar style

As ancient alternative therapies go, Virudha ahar, or ‘Antagonistic food material’ to give its slightly more scary-sounding title, isn’t a bad one. In a spiritual nutshell, it believes that to keep a balanced mind in a balanced body, good food is of utmost importance. Incompatible foods are called virudha-ahar and by combining different types of food one can turn healthy foods to unhealthy ones and unhealthy foods to healthy ones.

So have you been pleasantly surprised or surprisingly disappointed by unexpected food combinations you’ve come across? Do you believe that certain foods will always ‘fight’ each other and by eating them you’ll pay the price with your health? Or, maybe like all good relationships in life, you think a little bit of conflict keeps things interesting? Feel free to stand your corner with your point of view on the forum.