As a further elaboration: growing up, I absolutely hated pasta salad. I could not and would not eat it. But one day, when I was about 22-23, I was working somewhere that includes meals, since shifts were literally all day for a week (save eight hours for sleeping). The cook made a pasta salad that I could only describe as “orgasmic.” I ate that same pasta salad for every meal for the next two days until they finally tossed the leftovers. Ever since then, I have been “converted” to enjoy pasta salad. That one dish completely changed how my body reacts to a food that I already tried several times.
Cheddar cheese on apple pie. Sounds like an atrocity to the uninitiated, but an ex girlfriend from the Midwest introduced me to it and the flavor combination is undeniably amazing.
Cheese - particularly sharp cheeses - can work so well with sweet deserts. In my part of the world it’s tradition to serve Christmas cake - thick, dense, sweet and well-fed - with a slither of Stilton or Wensleydale. So many people turn their nose up at it but it’s such an amazing combination.