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Asparagus Eggplant

A dish of boiled asparagus bundles served with toasted bread and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Asparagus Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Slice the asparagus.

  2. Cut them to the same length.

  3. Tie them in separate bundles.

Cook and assemble

  1. Boil the bundles in water with a little coarse sea salt until tender.

  2. Dip a round of toasted bread in the boiling water.

  3. Place it in a dish.

  4. Pour melted butter over the toast.

  5. Arrange the asparagus around it.

Serve

  1. Serve with additional melted butter in a sauce-tureen.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Asparagus + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
The main vegetable; boiling until tender softens its fibres for a soft, easy bite.
Toasted bread
Forms a crisp-edged base that softens slightly and soaks up the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, coating the toast and asparagus.

The step that matters

Dipping the toasted bread in boiling water. A brief dip softens the toast enough to absorb butter without falling apart. Longer soaking turns it soggy and fragile, so dip it quickly and move it to the dish.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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