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Boiled Asparagus

A simple boiled asparagus dish served with butter, cream, and optional buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Boiled Asparagus

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shave off the hard outside of the asparagus and cut away the woody lower part. Rinse in cold water.

  2. Tie the asparagus together in bunches and place them in plenty of boiling salted water.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes, being careful not to overcook.

  4. Remove the strings after placing the asparagus on a serving dish.

Second method

  1. For the second method, cut tender stalks into inch-long pieces and cook in just enough salted boiling water to cover.

  2. When tender, add cream or milk and a piece of butter, along with white pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve over slices of buttered toast in small dishes, allowing each person to take a piece of toast with asparagus and some of the cooking liquid.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

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

  3. Asparagus + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together838 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Cream + white peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes
  5. Asparagus + white peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together120 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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, cooked until tender while keeping its texture and flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the cooking liquid and sauce.
Cream or milk
Adds creaminess and body, mellowing the sauce into a smooth coating.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes without overcooking. Asparagus turns soft and mushy once its cell walls break down past tenderness, so timing matters. Checking early keeps the stalks bright green with a pleasant bite.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, butter, 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.

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