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Asparagus Salad

A salad of boiled asparagus with mayonnaise dressing, garnished with lettuce hearts and optional capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Asparagus Salad

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Asparagus Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Boil the asparagus until tender, then cut off the hard ends and let cool.

  2. Cut the asparagus into 2‑inch pieces.

Dress and serve

  1. Place the asparagus in the center of a serving dish and pour mayonnaise dressing over it.

  2. Garnish with small white hearts of lettuce and sprinkle with capers if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Asparagus + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Asparagus + caperstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Forms the body of the salad and provides its tender, slightly firm texture.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds richness, moisture and fat that coat the asparagus and carry flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the asparagus until tender. Boiling until just tender keeps the spears firm enough to hold their shape. Overcooking softens the cell walls and makes them mushy, while undercooked spears stay fibrous and tough. Cooling them before dressing stops further cooking and keeps the mayonnaise from thinning.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, lettuce):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Celeryfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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