Name: Consomme Aux Pointes D'asperges
Ingredients: 8 cups clear beef broth (blonde de veau); 25 pieces of asparagus; Salt to taste

Why it works: Beef and asparagus work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Consomme Aux Pointes D'asperges

Ingredients

8 cups clear beef broth (blonde de veau)
25 pieces of asparagus
Salt to taste

Directions

Prepare

Prepare 8 cups of clear beef broth and set aside.
Cut the tender green ends of the asparagus into pieces half an inch long and set aside.
Shred the tough ends of the asparagus.

Make the consommé

Boil the shredded tough ends with the broth to flavor it.
In a separate pot, boil enough broth to cook the green asparagus pieces.
Add the green asparagus pieces to the boiling broth and cook until tender.
Drain the cooked asparagus pieces.
Combine the drained asparagus with the flavored broth and heat to boiling point before serving.

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.

Beef + asparagustop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together237 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Clear beef broth: Provides the savory base that the asparagus flavor is infused into.
Asparagus: Supplies the vegetal flavor and the tender green pieces served in the consommé.

“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.