Skip to main content
Main

Asparagus Tops, with Sauce

A dish of asparagus tops simmered in butter, seasoned, then finished with a creamy egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Asparagus Tops, with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Prepare the asparagus tops by cutting them into 1.5‑inch pieces.

  2. In a flat saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the asparagus and toss gently until warmed.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar.

  5. Let it boil once or twice, then remove from heat.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with the cream and a small piece of butter.

  2. Combine the egg mixture with the asparagus, stirring gently without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  5. Asparagus + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus tops
Form the main vegetable body of the dish and carry the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream sauce into a smooth, coating texture when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth texture that carries the flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the asparagus and the sauce.

The step that matters

Combine the egg mixture with the asparagus, stirring gently without boiling.. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the mixture gets too hot or boils it can scramble and turn grainy. Gentle stirring off the heat keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, egg, cream):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, egg, cream. 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.

You might also like

Asparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesCream of AsparagusCream of Asparagus38 recipesBoiled AsparagusBoiled Asparagus27 recipes