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Asparagus with Dutch Sauce

A dish of boiled asparagus topped with a creamy Dutch sauce made from butter, flour, water, oil, vinegar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Asparagus with Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Wash the asparagus and scrape or cut off the woody ends.

  2. Tie the asparagus in small bunches and boil in salted water until tender.

  3. Drain the asparagus and serve on a napkin or toast.

Make the Dutch sauce

  1. For the Dutch sauce, melt butter in a saucepan and stir in flour until bubbling.

  2. Gradually add boiling water and season with salt and white pepper.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in oil or butter, vinegar or lemon juice, and egg yolks.

  4. Serve the sauce immediately to prevent curdling.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Asparagus + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, cooked until tender in salted water.
Butter
Melts with flour to form the roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Combines with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Egg yolks
Emulsify and enrich the sauce, giving it a smooth, thick, creamy texture.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken at moderate heat but scramble and curdle if too hot. Removing the saucepan from the heat before stirring in the yolks, then serving promptly, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, butter, flour, vinegar, egg. 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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