Name: Asparagus Piemontaise
Ingredients: 1 bunch green asparagus; ½ cup nut-brown butter sauce

Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Asparagus Piemontaise

Ingredients

1 bunch green asparagus
½ cup nut-brown butter sauce

Directions

Prepare the asparagus as you would for Hollandaise.
Cook and drain the asparagus.
Serve the asparagus on a dish with the nut-brown butter sauce.

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.

Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,026 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Asparagus + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together573 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Green asparagus: Forms the main vegetable base, providing the tender texture and fresh, grassy flavour of the dish.
Nut-brown butter sauce: Adds rich, nutty fat and aroma that coats the asparagus and balances its earthy green flavour.