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To Boil Asparagus

A boiled asparagus dish served on toasted bread with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the white part of the asparagus stalks and soak them in cold spring water.

  2. In a wide stewpan, bring the salted water to a boil.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the asparagus and boil for 15 minutes or until tender.

  2. Dip the toasted bread in the asparagus water and place it in a dish.

  3. Arrange the asparagus on the toast with the white ends outwards and the points meeting in the center.

  4. Serve with melted butter in a tureen.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

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

  3. 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
The main vegetable; boiling softens its fibrous stalks until tender.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that complements the mild, green flavor of the asparagus.
Toasted bread
Soaks up cooking water and gives a dry, crisp base that holds the asparagus.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes or until tender. Overcooking makes asparagus soft and dull in color, while undercooking leaves stalks fibrous. Checking for tenderness at the stated time keeps the texture right.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter. 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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