Skip to main content
Main

Asparagus on Toast

A toasted bread served with cooked asparagus and a white sauce made from asparagus stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Asparagus on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Dry the bread in a 400°F (200°C) oven until crisp, then brown it.

  2. Dip the toasted bread quickly into ½ cup of hot water mixed with ¼ teaspoon salt.

  3. Prepare and cook the asparagus, cutting off the heads.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the asparagus heads on the toast.

  2. Make a white sauce using asparagus stock instead of milk, and pour it over the toast.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + asparagustop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

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

  5. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

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

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

Bread
Dried and browned to form a crisp base that holds the toppings.
Asparagus
Provides the main vegetable topping and its flavour to the dish.
Asparagus stock
Replaces milk in the sauce, adding asparagus flavour and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the white sauce.
Flour
Thickens the white sauce so it coats the toast.

The step that matters

Dipping the toast in hot water. The toast should be dipped quickly so it softens slightly without becoming soggy. Staying in the liquid too long lets the bread absorb too much water and fall apart.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, flour. 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 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipes