One of the food books I have been enjoying recently is The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit. It takes a wide range of ingredients and suggests numerous possible pairings between them.
Some, like carrot and cumin, are well established although the observation that garnishing a carrot and cumin soup with parsley brings together three plants from the same umbelliferous family was fascinating as well as tasty. Others prompt less obvious experiments. For example, Niki notes that strawberries and tomatoes have many of the same flavour compounds and so can be substituted for each other. That led to me creating a dessert with chopped strawberries and a sprinkle of sugar supplemented with chopped cherry tomatoes fresh from the garden and dusted with a little cinnamon (noted as having an affinity with both). Voila, a very red and very tasty sweet salad!