Why it works: Asparagus and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Aspakagus Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the asparagus in water until tender.
Cut off the hard ends and set the rest aside.
When cool, cut the asparagus into 1-inch long pieces and place in a salad dish.
Pour mayonnaise dressing over the asparagus.
Garnish with a few capers.
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.
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Asparagus + caperstop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together75 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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