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Raked Asparagus

A dish of asparagus coated with a thin flour and butter paste, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Raked Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a thin paste with flour and soft butter.

  2. Spread the paste over the asparagus.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the dish with a plate and place a weight on it.

  2. Cook until the asparagus is very tender.

  3. Serve in the baking dish.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together704 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + asparagustop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 main vegetable that becomes tender as it cooks under the covering.
Flour
Thickens the soft butter into a paste that clings to the asparagus.
Soft butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the flour into a spreadable paste that adds moisture.

The step that matters

Cook until the asparagus is very tender. Asparagus needs enough time under the covered weight to soften fully. Stopping early leaves it fibrous, because the cell walls only break down with sustained heat.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

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