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A Sparagus

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,145 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Cut off the white ends of the asparagus about 6 inches from the head and scrape them downwards.

  2. Soak the asparagus in clean water and tie them in small bundles.

  3. Boil water in a saucepan and add the asparagus, cooking quickly to avoid overboiling.

  4. Slice the bread and toast it until brown on both sides.

  5. Once the asparagus is cooked, carefully remove it and dip the toast in the asparagus water.

  6. Arrange the asparagus heads on the toast with the white ends outwards and pour melted butter over them.

  7. Cut the orange into quarters for garnish.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Asparagus + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Asparagus + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together94 recipes

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

  4. Asparagus + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,022 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Bread + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, bread, butter):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Applebetter flavor fit
  3. Coconutbetter flavor fit
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

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