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Fried Asparagus

Fried asparagus is boiled briefly, then sautéed in butter and seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,026 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fried Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the asparagus for 2 minutes, then drain it.

  2. Dip each piece in butter.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the asparagus in hot fat until golden.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. Serve hot.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Main vegetable; boiling softens it, and frying gives its outside a golden, crisp coating.
Butter
Fat that coats the spears and carries heat, adding richness and helping them brown.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat until golden. If the fat is not hot enough, the asparagus absorbs more oil and turns greasy and pale instead of crisp and browned. Drying it after boiling also helps the fat stay hot and spatter less.

“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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