Name: Lamb with Asparagus
Ingredients: 1 lamb breast or long tendons; asparagus; coarse sea salt; pepper; spinach or other vegetables for farce; liver; bacon or ham; parsley; apples

Why it works: Asparagus and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 274 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Lamb with Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the lamb breast or tendons and season with coarse sea salt and pepper.
Cook the lamb with asparagus until tender.
Prepare a vegetable farce using spinach or other vegetables.
Remove the brains from the lamb head and fill it with the farce.
Bake the stuffed head until golden.
Slice the liver and fry it with bacon or ham.
Garnish the dish with fried crumbs and parsley.

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.

Asparagus + spinachtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together274 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,025 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,400 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Asparagus + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together566 recipes

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

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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, asparagus, pepper, spinach, liver, ham, parsley):

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Cherryfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, asparagus, pepper, spinach, liver, ham, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.