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Asparagus Upon Toast

A dish of boiled asparagus served on toasted bread, buttered and seasoned with pepper.

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. Cut asparagus stalks to equal lengths, discarding woody parts and scraping the white sections.

  2. Tie the asparagus in a bunch with soft tape and cook in boiling water for about 30 minutes.

Make the toast

  1. Toast the bread slices until golden brown.

  2. Dip the toasted bread in the asparagus cooking liquid, then butter generously and place on a hot serving dish.

Assemble and serve

  1. Drain the asparagus, untie it, and arrange it on the toast. Season with pepper and additional butter to taste.

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 stalks
Forms the main vegetable topping, providing the dish's fresh, green flavour and tender texture when cooked.
Bread
Provides a crisp, browned base that holds the asparagus and soaks up flavour from the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and carries flavour across the toast and asparagus.

The step that matters

Dip the toasted bread in the asparagus cooking liquid. Toast dipped too long turns soggy and loses its crispness, so it should be dipped briefly and buttered right away to keep structure. Hot toast absorbs the liquid and seasoning more evenly.

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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