Name: Asparagus Salad
Ingredients: Asparagus tips; Salt; French dressing or mayonnaise; Lettuce; Turnips

Why it works: Lettuce and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Asparagus Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the asparagus tips in salted water until tender.
Chill the asparagus.
Serve the chilled asparagus with French dressing or mayonnaise on a bed of lettuce, or in small cups made from cooked and scooped-out turnips.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Lettuce + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together526 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Asparagus + lettucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together313 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Asparagus + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together328 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).