Name: Asparagus Pudding
Ingredients: 1 bundle of asparagus; 4 cups stock; 2 slices of bread

Why it works: Asparagus and bread work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 363 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Asparagus Pudding

Ingredients

1 bundle of asparagus
4 cups stock
2 slices of bread

Directions

Prepare

Cut the tender part of the asparagus into 1‑inch pieces.
Fry the bread slices until golden and cut into dice.

Make the soup

Boil the asparagus pieces until tender.
Cook the asparagus in stock for 15 minutes.
Serve the soup over the fried bread.

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 + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together363 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

Asparagus: Forms the main body of the soup and provides its vegetable flavour and texture.
Stock: Cooks the asparagus and supplies the liquid that makes up the soup.
Bread: Fried until golden, it adds a crisp, toasted contrast to the soft soup.

“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.