Asafétida

The resin only converts in hot fat. Raw it is a smell, cooked it is food.

A pinch does the work of a chopped onion, which is the whole Jain argument.

Popped first, resin second, both in the same spoonful of very hot fat.

Two sulfur sources, both only edible after they have hit hot fat.

Musk and sulfur, and the pair reads as an allium that is not in the pot.

Starch takes sulfur cleanly; it is why the samosa tastes of onion without any.

Brassica sulfur meets resin sulfur, and the two amplify rather than stack.

Acid cuts the fetid edge and leaves a savoury depth nothing else supplies.

Slimy pod plus sulfur resin; the funk is what stops it tasting of nothing.

Also the practical reason: it is what makes the legume digestible at all.

Bitter root and stinking resin, bloomed together, neither edible on its own.

A pinch reads as onion and garlic that were never there. Also settles the pulse.

Shared sulfur and glutamate; the resin makes fungus read as though cured.

Two fermented funks stacked. The resin does garum work with no salt attached.

Sulfur already sits in cocoa at trace level; a pinch just makes it deliberate.