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Asperges En Petits-pois

A dish of boiled asparagus served with butter, cream sauce, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Asperges En Petits-pois

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tender parts of the asparagus into pieces about 1 inch long and soak them in cold water.

Cook

  1. Bring 2 quarts of boiling water to a boil and add ½ ounce of salt.

  2. Drain the asparagus and add it to the boiling water.

  3. Boil rapidly until tender, about 10 minutes.

  4. Drain thoroughly and return the asparagus to the heat with the butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, and cream sauce.

  5. Stir carefully to avoid breaking the asparagus.

Serve

  1. When scalding hot, serve on neatly trimmed rounds of thin, buttered 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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green asparagus
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked until tender and coated in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy coating to the asparagus.
Cream sauce
Provides the creamy moisture and body that binds the dish together.

The step that matters

Stir carefully to avoid breaking the asparagus. Tender asparagus pieces are fragile once cooked, and rough stirring breaks them apart and turns the dish mushy. Gentle folding keeps the spears intact while they warm through in the sauce.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, sauce, nutmeg, sugar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, sauce, nutmeg, sugar, 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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