Name: Asparagus Patties, Comtesse
Ingredients: Asparagus; Fresh mushrooms; Butter; Veloute sauce; Salt; Pepper; Lemon juice; Puff pastry

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Asparagus Patties, Comtesse

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Clean the asparagus and cut it into pieces half an inch long.
Par-boil the asparagus and drain it on a sieve.
Clean the mushrooms and cut them into dice.
Sauté the mushrooms with the asparagus in butter.
Mix the asparagus and mushrooms with veloute sauce and simmer for ten minutes.
Season with salt, pepper, and a little lemon juice.
Fill small puff pastry patties with the mixture.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until very hot.
Serve with additional rich veloute sauce on the side.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Asparagus + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together704 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Asparagus + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together400 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,968 recipes

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