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Dessert

Imitation Asparagus

A dessert made of vanilla cream ice shaped like asparagus, optionally colored green with pistachio ice or spinach greening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 407 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Imitation Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 1 quart of vanilla cream ice.

  2. If using, mix 1 tablespoon of spinach greening with ¼ of the vanilla cream ice to create the green composition.

Fill and freeze

  1. Use the vanilla ice to fill 2/3 of the asparagus moulds.

  2. Add the green composition to the bud end of the moulds.

  3. Embed the moulds in rough ice for at least 1 hour.

  4. Turn out the moulds and place them on paper in an ice cave for another hour to freeze completely.

Serve

  1. Serve the imitation asparagus in an oval ice block shaped like a low basket or pedestal.

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. Vanilla + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Pistachio + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cream + pistachiotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Vanilla + asparagustop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Vanilla and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Vanilla cream ice
Forms the creamy body of the imitation asparagus stalks.
Green pistachio ice
Supplies the green colour that makes the stalks look like asparagus.

The step that matters

Fill the bud end with the green composition. Ice cream must stay very cold while it is shaped, or it softens and blurs the line between colours. Keeping the moulds embedded in rough ice until fully frozen helps the colour stay where it was placed.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vanilla, cream, pistachio):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, cream, pistachio. 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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