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Dessert

Imitation Asparagus

A novelty dessert made by freezing vanilla cream ice and green pistachio or spinach mixture in asparagus-shaped molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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. Mix ½ pint of green pistachio ice or 1 tablespoon of spinach greening with ¼ of the vanilla cream ice.

Mould and freeze

  1. Use the vanilla ice to fill two-thirds of the asparagus moulds.

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

  3. Imbed 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 white stalk body of the asparagus and gives a creamy, mild base.
Green pistachio ice
Provides the green colour and a nutty flavour for the bud end.
Spinach greening
Adds green colour to the bud end in place of pistachio ice.

The step that matters

Imbedding the moulds in rough ice. Ice must be packed firmly around the moulds and kept cold for the full hour so the ice cream sets solid. If it softens or the moulds are removed too early, the shapes can slump or lose their definition when turned out.

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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