Name: Bamboo Shoots
Ingredients: Young bamboo shoots; shoyu (soy sauce)

Why it works: Bamboo shoots and sauce work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Bamboo Shoots

Ingredients

Young bamboo shoots
shoyu (soy sauce)

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

Remove the tough outer layer from the bamboo shoots.
Slice the shoots into thin pieces.

Cook and season

In a pot, bring water to a boil and add the bamboo shoots.
Cook for about 10 minutes until tender.
Drain the shoots and toss them with shoyu to taste.

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.

Bamboo shoots + saucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Young bamboo shoots: Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender when simmered in boiling water.
Shoyu (soy sauce): Adds salty, savory flavor that seasons the shoots after cooking.

“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.