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Asparagus Heads As Peas

A dish of asparagus cooked like peas, finished with butter, flour, egg yolks, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Asparagus Heads As Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Trim the asparagus heads to about 2 inches and cut into pea-sized pieces.

  2. Place the asparagus in a saucepan with salt and cold water; boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the asparagus.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the asparagus to the melted butter and shake over the heat for a few minutes.

  3. Sprinkle the flour over the asparagus.

  4. Add the boiling water, pepper, and salt.

  5. Mix the egg yolks with the milk.

  6. Pour the mixture over the asparagus.

  7. Let simmer gently for 5 to 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve warm.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 bulk of the dish and provides its main vegetable flavour and tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps coat the asparagus as it warms.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it simmers.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a creamy body when gently heated.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, mellowing the sauce with dairy richness.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the egg yolk and milk mixture. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat but can curdle or turn grainy if the sauce boils hard, so keep the heat low and the sauce moving only slightly.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

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