Skip to main content
Main

Asparagus with Parmesan

A dish of boiled asparagus coated in Parmesan, egg, and breadcrumbs, then fried and served with white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Asparagus and parmesan cheese work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 301 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Asparagus with Parmesan

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the asparagus until tender, then let it cool.

Coat

  1. Dip the edible ends in the egg yolks.

  2. Roll the asparagus in grated Parmesan cheese, then in egg and bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

  2. Serve with white 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. Asparagus + parmesan cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Parmesan cheese + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together577 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Asparagus
Forms the main body of the dish and is the vegetable that gets coated and fried.
Egg yolks
Act as a binder so the Parmesan and bread crumbs stick to the asparagus.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and helps the coating brown in the hot fat.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy before it crisps. Hot fat seals the crumb coating quickly so the inside stays tender and the outside browns evenly.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, parmesan cheese, bread, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parmesan cheese, bread, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesAsparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes