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Asparagus Salad, with Shrimps

A salad of asparagus with shrimp, dressed in olive oil, vinegar, and egg yolk sauce, garnished with hard‑boiled egg quarters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,096 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Asparagus Salad, with Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the asparagus as directed in recipe No. 78.

  2. Add ½ cup of picked shrimp and season with salt and pepper.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, sieve the yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Slowly stir in ⅓ cup of olive oil and a few drops of vinegar.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the salad, arrange it nicely, and garnish with quarters of hard-boiled eggs.

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.

  1. Asparagus + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,096 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Asparagus + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together134 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

Egg yolks
Sieved yolks emulsify with the oil, giving the sauce a thick, smooth body.
Olive oil
Provides fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Shrimp
Supplies the main protein and a mild sweet seafood flavour to the salad.
Asparagus
Forms the base of the salad, adding crisp texture and a green vegetable flavour.

The step that matters

Slowly stir in the olive oil. Adding oil gradually to the sieved yolks lets the emulsion form. Pouring it in too fast can split the sauce into separated oil and egg.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, pepper, egg, olive, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, pepper, egg, olive, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

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