Let's discuss flavor profiles.....

Taste is so subjective. What is delicious to a person familiar with a particular combination can be abhorrent to another....then layer on a bunch of cultural rules (like the Italians' no cheese w/seafood), and you get some HUGE variety in what "tastes good".

Most people underutilize their noses when cooking. Flavor, after all, is really aroma: take good sniffs of those spices & ingredients...are they appealing? Do they make you want a second sniff? Then think about texture, color, sweetness, bitterness, acidity....read cookbooks to educate your palate, eat new things to keep your imagination engaged, try things (especially the ones you don't like) more than once...

Not everyone has the same capacity for smell/taste; there are biological differences in our perception.

If you want a good reference-y work, look at The Flavor Bible. It's a big ol compendium of complementary flavors. LINK It's full of lists of "matching" flavors.

I think I get what you are going after. The key to doctoring a recipe is to stay within the same spice profile. For example, you are not going to spice a curry dish and spaghetti the same nor should you cross spice the 2. Meaning, don't make spaghetti taste like curry. "You're going to have a bad time." The trick is to stay within the same spice profile or palate but play with amount or other spices in that profile. So if you are going to add more cheese to a dish, back off the salt, etc. In spaghetti, to stay in the same example, you can add chili powde, but you wouldn't throw in tarragon. Does this make sense?

ETA: what you want to know more about is called Food Chemestry. Alton Brown gets dogged a lot for being a bit of an eccentric; however, of all the celbrity chefs, he is the authority. You can start a search from there.

I was just speaking in generalities. Many things can be blended and added to different dishes, but when curry comes to mind, marinara typically does not. Tarragon can be used in tomato dishes, but if you are adding chili powered (hinting towards a more southwestern America flavor) tarragon may not be the next spice you grab. Again, I was speaking in generalities; though you are technically correct which is of course the best kind of correct.

I still think the OP should be researching food chemistry books and sites. I remember my grandmother was a wiz at it. She knew how to bake dishes without having all of the ogre dinars, bc she knew she could add more and less of other things and it would work. It's cool stuff if you are into that kind of thing.

Flavor profiles sounds like something I hear on BBQ Pitmasters