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Asparagus

Boiled asparagus served on toasted bread with melted butter or cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the bottom part of the asparagus well.

  2. Tie the asparagus in bundles of 12 heads each.

Cook and serve

  1. In a pot, bring 3 quarts of water to a boil and add 1 tablespoon of salt and ½ teaspoon of carbonate of soda if needed.

  2. Boil the asparagus for 20 minutes.

  3. Serve the asparagus on a slice of toasted bread with melted butter or cream sauce on the side.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 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
The main vegetable; its tender stalks soften as they cook in boiling water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying a rounded, savoury flavour alongside the mild asparagus.

The step that matters

Boil the asparagus for 20 minutes. Asparagus softens quickly in boiling water. Cooking too long turns the stalks mushy and dulls their bright green colour, as chlorophyll breaks down with prolonged heat.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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