Press & Media Kit

CompKitchen for journalists

CompKitchen is a flavor-pairing engine that ranks ingredient combinations by the aroma compounds two ingredients share — blended with how often they're actually cooked together across 610K+ curated recipes. It surfaces both why classics work and chemically compatible pairings that almost nobody cooks. Everything below is free to use; numbers are live from the engine.

Contact: [email protected] Brand assets

857

Ingredients

5,240

Flavor compounds

610K+

Curated recipes

44,648

Papers indexed

Boilerplate

CompKitchen (compkitchen.com) is a flavor-pairing engine built by RowSet LLC. It ranks ingredient combinations by the aroma compounds two ingredients share — drawn from published chemistry datasets and a licensed odor-threshold compilation — blended with how often those ingredients co-occur across 610K+ curated recipes. The result surfaces both why classics work and "white-space" pairings that are chemically compatible but rarely cooked together. The engine spans 5,240 flavor compounds and 857 ingredients, and its research is published openly on Zenodo. CompKitchen launched in March 2026. RowSet LLC is a solo company based in Conley, Georgia, in metro Atlanta, founded by Mark Johnson.

At a glance

Product: CompKitchen — compkitchen.com
Company: RowSet LLC — Conley, GA (metro Atlanta)
CompKitchen launched: March 2026
Founder: Mark Johnson (solo)
Recognition: Selected for the Georgia Tech Food & Beverage Incubator Program
Method: Shared-compound overlap (IDF-weighted Jaccard) + recipe co-occurrence, weighted by odor-detection thresholds
Data sources: FlavorDB, FooDB, PubMed / GC-MS literature, a licensed Rychlik 1998 odor-threshold compilation; plus Ahn et al. flavor network, ChemTastesDB, FlavorGraph
Pricing: Free tier · Pro $12/month (or $99/year)
Press contact: [email protected]

What we do — and don't claim

CompKitchen ranks pairings by the aroma compounds two ingredients share and how often they co-occur in real recipes. That's a measure of chemical and culinary affinity — not a guarantee that a pairing tastes better, and not the result of a sensory panel. We don't claim any combination is "proven" or "validated" to taste good; we surface the molecular basis and let cooks judge the plate. Every headline number on the site is recomputed live from the engine, so the marketing can't drift from the data.

Story starters

Computed live from the engine — verify on the linked compare and surprises pages.

Tomato × Black Currant savory × dessert berry

293 shared compounds · 51% aroma overlap · cooked together in ~13 recipes

Cardamom × Lovage spice × herb

231 shared compounds · 65% aroma overlap · cooked together in ~0 recipes

Coffee × Chocolate the classic, confirmed

103 shared compounds · 18% aroma overlap · cooked together in ~1497 recipes

See it in action

Live screenshots — click through to the page.

Compound comparison

Coffee and chocolate share 103 aroma compounds — shown molecule by molecule.

Surprising pairings

High overlap, low tradition — the engine’s signature output.

Ingredient profile

Every ingredient’s compounds, partners, and flavor science.

Decode series

Why award-winning hot sauces work — read by the chemistry.

Quotable

“Most flavor-pairing advice is folk wisdom — CompKitchen ranks it by the actual aroma compounds two ingredients share.”

“Ask the engine for chocolate’s best partner, using shared aroma alone and knowing nothing about cafés, and it answers: coffee.”

“We don’t claim a pairing tastes better. We show the chemistry that says it could, and let the cook decide.”

Founder

Mark Johnson is the Atlanta-based founder of CompKitchen, a flavor-pairing engine he built solo, drawing on an IT background. CompKitchen was selected for the Georgia Tech Food & Beverage Incubator Program, has been profiled by Hypepotamus, Atlanta’s startup-news outlet, and its underlying research is published on Zenodo (ORCID 0009-0003-1877-4477).