Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Asparagus

A dish of tender asparagus simmered in a butter‑flour milk sauce, served hot on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the asparagus

  1. Cut the asparagus into 1‑inch lengths, wash, drain, and cook in salted boiling water until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat.

  2. When the butter bubbles, add 1 tablespoon of flour and mix well.

  3. Stir in 1 cup of boiling milk, adding salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Add the drained asparagus and a small piece of butter, stirring carefully.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot on pieces of buttered 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 tender, vegetal texture.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it is combined with the roux.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk to the roux. Adding hot milk all at once to the flour and butter mixture can cause lumps. Stirring steadily while adding the liquid lets the starch disperse evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

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

You might also like

Asparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesCream of AsparagusCream of Asparagus38 recipesBoiled AsparagusBoiled Asparagus27 recipes