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Asparagus Hollandaise

A dish of boiled asparagus topped with a butter, egg yolk, lemon, and cayenne Hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Asparagus Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the asparagus

  1. Cook asparagus in boiling salted water until soft, leaving tips out of water for the first 10 minutes.

  2. Drain and remove the string from the asparagus.

  3. Serve on a hot dish with Hollandaise sauce.

Make the Hollandaise

  1. Wash the butter in cold water and divide it into three pieces for the Hollandaise sauce.

  2. In a saucepan, combine one piece of butter, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

  3. Place the saucepan in a larger one with boiling water and stir constantly with a wire whisk until the butter melts.

  4. Add the second piece of butter, and as the sauce thickens, add the third piece.

  5. Stir in boiling water, cook for 1 minute, and season with salt and cayenne.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Butter
Provides richness and fat that forms the smooth, creamy body of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.
Asparagus
Main vegetable; cooking in boiling water softens its fibres until tender.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolks over boiling water. Yolks thicken as their proteins set, but too much heat scrambles them and the sauce curdles. Gentle, constant whisking over moderate heat keeps the emulsion smooth while the butter is added slowly.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Asparagusthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, pepper, lemon. 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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