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Asparagus En Hollandaise

A dish of boiled asparagus topped with melted butter and Hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Asparagus En Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Trim the asparagus.

  2. Boil the asparagus in salted water until tender.

  3. Drain the asparagus and place it on a serving plate.

Finish and serve

  1. Melt the butter.

  2. Pour the melted butter over the asparagus.

  3. Top with Hollandaise sauce before serving.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Asparagus + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together573 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 body of the dish and is cooked until tender by boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the asparagus.
Hollandaise sauce
Adds a rich, tangy, emulsified creaminess that coats the cooked spears.

The step that matters

Boil the asparagus until tender. Overcooking turns asparagus soft and olive-drab, while undercooking leaves it fibrous. Boiling in salted water seasons the spears and keeps them bright green, so they should be checked for doneness rather than timed loosely.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce. 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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