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To Boil Asparagus

A simple boiled asparagus dish served with butter or optional dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,968 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Boil Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the asparagus stalks and wash them in cold water.

  2. Tie the asparagus in bundles of fifteen or twenty.

Boil

  1. Bring a pot of water to a full boil and add the salt.

  2. Cook the asparagus for twenty minutes.

  3. Drain the asparagus thoroughly and steam slightly after cooking.

Serve and make gravy

  1. Serve on toast with melted butter or cold with oil and vinegar dressing.

  2. For gravy, cut the boiled asparagus into small pieces, discarding the white ends.

  3. Use the second boiling water to make gravy by adding a lump of butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Thicken the gravy with a spoonful of flour mixed with cold water if desired.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus stalks
Forms the main vegetable body of the dish, cooked until tender.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when mixed with cold water and stirred into the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour when melted over the asparagus or stirred into the gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour mixed in cold water. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Mixing it with cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the gravy thickens smoothly as it heats.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, flour, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, flour, pepper. 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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