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Spring Salad with Asparagus, Peas, and Arugula

This salad feels like spring: fresh, green, and crisp. It has roasted asparagus, spring peas, arugula, and parmesan cheese all complemented with a homemade honey mustard vinaigrette.

By tastykitchen · From Open Recipes · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and peas match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 807 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4
Prep20 min
Cook15 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By tastykitchen. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Asparagus + peastop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together807 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together274 recipes

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

  3. Olive + pinetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Olive + peastop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, olive, pepper, pine, peas, spinach, arugula):

  1. Beansbetter flavor fit
  2. Chickpeabetter flavor fit
  3. Walnutbetter flavor fit
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, olive, pepper, pine, peas, spinach, arugula. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).