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Creamed Asparagus

A dish of boiled asparagus tossed in cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Creamed Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the asparagus and cut it into 1-inch pieces, discarding all tough portions.

  2. Cook the asparagus in boiling salted water, uncovered, until tender, about 15-20 minutes.

  3. Drain the asparagus and mix it with the cream 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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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; cooking softens its fibres until tender.
Cream sauce
Coats the asparagus, adding richness and moisture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Cook the asparagus until just tender. Asparagus turns mushy and loses colour and flavour if overcooked, so checking for tenderness at the early end of the time range matters.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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