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Asparagus Sauce

A creamy sauce made from parboiled asparagus, milk, pepper, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Asparagus Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scrape the asparagus and parboil it until nearly done.

  2. Drain and cut the asparagus into small pieces.

  3. Stew the asparagus in the milk with pepper and salt until fully cooked.

  4. Pour the mixture into melted butter and serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Asparagus + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Forms the main body of the sauce and gives its vegetable flavour and texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the asparagus and creates a creamy, smooth base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a silky mouthfeel and rounder flavour.

The step that matters

Stew the asparagus in the milk until fully cooked. Milk can scorch or curdle if heated too hard, so gentle heat is needed. Fully softened asparagus blends into a smooth sauce rather than a stringy one.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, butter. 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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