Name: Asparagus Salad
Ingredients: 2 bunches of asparagus; 1 quart of water; 1 tablespoon of salt; cream salad dressing

Why it works: Asparagus and cream work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 838 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Asparagus Salad

Ingredients

2 bunches of asparagus
1 quart of water
1 tablespoon of salt
cream salad dressing

Directions

Cook the asparagus

Boil the asparagus in water with salt for 20 minutes.
Drain the asparagus in a colander.

Arrange and dress

Once cold, cut off the tender points and arrange them on a dish.
Pour the cream salad dressing over the asparagus.

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.

Asparagus + creamtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together838 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 salad, providing the vegetable texture and flavor.
Cream salad dressing: Adds moisture, richness and flavor over the cooled asparagus.

“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.