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Asparagus on Toast

A dish of tender asparagus stewed with cream, salt, and butter, served over graham toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Asparagus on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the asparagus topping

  1. Stew the tender asparagus for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the cream, salt, and butter to the asparagus.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture over graham toast.

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. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Asparagus + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together838 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Softens during stewing and forms the main body of the topping.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the asparagus.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silkier mouthfeel in the topping.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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