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Asparagus En Hollandaise

A dish of boiled asparagus topped with a butter‑flour‑milk‑egg yolk Hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Asparagus En Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Trim asparagus and boil until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan and stir in flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add milk, stirring until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and whisk in egg yolks and lemon juice.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve asparagus on toast and pour Hollandaise sauce over it.

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. Lemon + peppertop 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Forms the main vegetable base and provides the dish's fresh, green flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping to form the roux and give the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stable sauce when cooked with the butter as a roux.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as the starch in the flour gelatinizes.
Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce, adding richness and a silky texture when gently heated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Remove from heat and whisk in egg yolks and lemon juice. Egg yolks can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from heat before whisking in the yolks lets them thicken gently and smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

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