Skip to main content

Asparagus Tips and Grape Fruit

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Grapefruit and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Asparagus Tips and Grape Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove sections from the grapefruit as large as possible.

  2. Cover the grapefruit sections with sugar and let them chill on ice.

  3. Place the grapefruit on a bed of shredded lettuce with a few asparagus tips on one side.

  4. Drizzle a little French dressing over both the grapefruit and asparagus.

  5. Serve with mayonnaise.

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.

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. Grapefruit + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Lettuce + asparagustop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

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

  3. Grapefruit + asparagustop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Grapefruit + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + asparagustop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grapefruit, sugar, lettuce):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

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

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes