One of those sample combinations, coffee and carrot, is explored in another book I'd like to check out: The Art of Flavor. I listened to an interview with the authors, and they used this as an example of an entirely new flavor being created by an ingredient combination; one that doesn't seem to reference its constituent parts. So I can imagine that some of the other pairings, like strawberry and mushroom, might be similar.
This could be the exact value of a book like this—the discovery of combinations that no one would think of because they sound terrible.
Art of Flavor is a more conventional book, in that it's the product of a chef and a perfumer finding overlap in their creative processes. They then attempt to systemetize a process of combining and balancing flavor.
I have and enjoy The Flavor Bible, which is probably the most conventional (conceptually) of all these books, but is useful for its rigor. It doesn't attempt to discover new possibilities; it just catalogs combinations that have been discovered by hundreds of chefs around the world, and ranks these combinations based on how standard or harmonious they are.
All these approaches seem useful, but I find the one explored in the Matrix the most exciting.
Edited to add: the Flavor Matrix team has a website which gives access to their flavor pairing engine. I haven't played with it yet, since last I checked you needed a paid account. But it looks open now. The project is a collaboration between IBM's Watson AI team and some chefs, including the book's author.
