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Asparagus, Canned

A preserved asparagus dish made by canning and cooking with milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Asparagus, Canned

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cans

  1. Wash the asparagus in cold water and pack it into flat, square cans with heads together until full.

  2. Cover the cans tightly and fill them with cold water, adding ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt to each can.

  3. Seal the covers tightly and place the cans in a large boiler filled with cold water to cover them.

  4. Boil the cans slowly for 30 minutes, then puncture a small hole in the top of each can to release steam.

  5. Seal the holes quickly and return the cans to the boiler, boiling them slowly for another 30 minutes.

Make the cream sauce and serve

  1. To use the asparagus, pour off the water from the can.

  2. In a stew pan, heat ½ pint of rich sweet milk and mix in 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 teaspoons of flour.

  3. Stir the mixture into the hot milk and let it boil for 2 minutes.

  4. Add the asparagus and bring to a boil, then simmer for a few minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour 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
Forms the vegetable base of the dish and provides its main texture and flavour.
Rich sweet milk
Makes up the liquid of the sauce and gives it body and richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture into the hot milk. Adding the flour and butter mixture to hot milk while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour. 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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