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Asparagus on Toast

A dish of sautéed asparagus served on buttered toast with a wine‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the asparagus

  1. Cook the asparagus slowly for half an hour.

  2. Ten minutes before done, add a little coarse sea salt.

Assemble the toast

  1. Toast the bread and butter it well.

  2. Pour 1-2 tablespoons of liquor over the toast.

  3. Carefully place the asparagus on the toast.

  4. Mix a piece of butter with a little flour, then add pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Stir this mixture into the liquor and pour it over the asparagus.

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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 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 layer and provides the tender texture of the topping.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the toast brown and taste savoury.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquor mixture into a light sauce.
Liquor (such as white wine)
Adds acidity and moisture to the sauce poured over the asparagus.

The step that matters

Stir the butter and flour mixture into the liquor. Stirring the butter and flour into the liquor helps the flour disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, white wine, flour, 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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