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Asparagus Upon Toast

A simple dish of boiled asparagus served on buttered toast.

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 ↓

Asparagus Upon Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Tie the asparagus with soft string and cut away the tough ends.

  2. Cook the asparagus in salted boiling water for about 25 minutes.

Make the toast

  1. Dip each slice of toast in the asparagus cooking water and butter them while hot.

  2. Place the buttered toast on a heated dish.

Assemble and serve

  1. Drain the asparagus and arrange it on the toast.

  2. Season generously with salt, pepper, and additional butter.

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

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

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

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 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).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Forms the main vegetable topping and gives the dish its fresh, grassy flavour.
Bread
Provides a crisp, absorbent base that soaks up cooking water and butter.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the hot toast and seasoning.

The step that matters

Cook the asparagus in salted boiling water for about 25 minutes. Asparagus cooked too briefly stays fibrous and raw-tasting, while overcooking makes it soft and dull in colour. Salted boiling water seasons the stalks evenly and the cooking water is reused to moisten the toast.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper. 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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