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Stewed Asparagus

A cooked asparagus dish simmered in butter, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Stewed Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and break the asparagus into small pieces.

Cook the asparagus

  1. Cook in just enough water to cover for 20 to 30 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain the asparagus and add butter and salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour in the milk and bring to a boil.

  2. Thicken with flour.

  3. Boil again and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 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 main body of the dish and gives it its vegetable flavour and tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that becomes a creamy sauce around the asparagus.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce by swelling as it heats.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour. Flour must be stirred into the hot milk so it disperses evenly; added in lumps, it stays clumpy. Boiling afterward lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce fully.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, 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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