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Plain Asparagus

A simple boiled asparagus dish served with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Plain Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Wash the asparagus well.

  2. Cut off the hard ends.

  3. Tie into small bundles.

  4. Place the bundles upright in a kettle of water, leaving the tips above the water for the first 15 minutes.

  5. Cover with boiling water and cook until tender.

  6. Drain and place in a dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt the butter and pour it over the asparagus.

  2. Rub together 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour in a saucepan.

  3. Add 1 cup of cold milk and stir constantly until it reaches boiling point.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Strain over the asparagus.

  6. Beat an egg into the sauce just before removing it from the heat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Is the vegetable being cooked and served, so it forms the main body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and coats the asparagus with flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce as it heats. Flour thickens milk only when it is stirred constantly while heating; otherwise lumps form and the sauce can scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, 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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