Name: Asparagus Omelet
Ingredients: 8 to 10 stalks of asparagus; a little salt; 6 eggs

Why it works: Asparagus and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,338 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Asparagus Omelet

Ingredients

8 to 10 stalks of asparagus
a little salt
6 eggs

Directions

Boil the asparagus with a little salt until half cooked, then cut the edible part into small pieces.
Beat the eggs and mix in the asparagus.
Cook the omelet as you normally would.

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.

Asparagus + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,338 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Set when cooked, forming the structure and body of the omelet.
Asparagus: Adds bite and a vegetal flavour, with texture from its pieces in the set eggs.

“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.