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Spring Vegetables — Asparagus

Asparagus served on toast with white sauce or melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and sauce work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 573 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Spring Vegetables — Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the asparagus and cut off the tough ends.

  2. Tie the asparagus in bunches or break into 1-inch pieces.

  3. Cook in boiling salted water for about 20 minutes or until soft.

  4. Drain and remove any strings.

Serve

  1. Lay the asparagus on toast with the heads all facing the same way.

  2. Pour over a white sauce or melted 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. Asparagus + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together573 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, becoming tender as heat softens its fibres during boiling.
White sauce or melted butter
Adds richness and moisture that soaks into the toast and coats the asparagus.

The step that matters

Cooking until soft. Boiling softens the asparagus by breaking down its fibrous cell walls. Stop when it is just tender, since longer cooking turns it mushy and dull in colour and flavour.

“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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