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Steamed Asparagus

Steamed asparagus served with a butter, cream, egg yolk, and lemon juice sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and lemon work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 704 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Steamed Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Trim the asparagus.

  2. Steam the asparagus in a jam‑pot nearly filled with boiling water, placed in a large saucepan half full of boiling water, and tightly covered for nearly an hour.

Make the sauce

  1. In an enamelled saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the cream, egg yolk, and lemon juice to the melted butter.

  3. Stir the mixture over low heat for three minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the asparagus with the sauce.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Asparagus + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,338 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the rich base of the sauce, adding fat and a smooth mouthfeel.
Egg yolk
Thickens the warm sauce as it sets gently, giving it a creamy, emulsified texture.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the sauce smoother and milder.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over low heat. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat; if the mixture gets too hot, the proteins can scramble and the sauce turns grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Avocadofits less well

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