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Canned Asparagus

A creamy sauce made from canned asparagus, stock, flour, sweet cream, nutmeg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Canned Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the asparagus and soup stock or water in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour, sweet cream, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Stir in the butter and heat gently.

  4. Remove from heat before it curdles.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Asparagus + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the main vegetable flavour and body of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rounded mouthfeel and flavour.

The step that matters

Remove from heat before it curdles. Cream-based sauces can split or curdle when overheated because the milk proteins coagulate and separate from the fat. Gentle heat and timely removal keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, nutmeg, butter. 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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