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Asparagus on Toast

A simple dish of boiled asparagus served on buttered crustless toast with white sauce.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the woody ends from the asparagus and tie it into a loose bundle with twine.

  2. Boil enough salted water in a large saucepan to cover the asparagus.

  3. Cook the asparagus until tender, but do not let the tips break.

  4. Spread butter on crustless slices of toast and place them on a platter.

Assemble and serve

  1. Drain the asparagus and remove the twine, then arrange it neatly on the toast.

  2. Just before serving, pour white sauce over the green tips of the asparagus.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Asparagus + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together573 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 vegetable topping and provides the tender, green texture of the dish.
Bread slices
Provide a crisp, absorbent base that holds the asparagus and sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the toast and softens its surface.
White sauce
Adds creamy moisture and richness over the asparagus at serving.

The step that matters

Cooking the asparagus until tender. Asparagus cooks quickly, and overcooking makes the stalks limp and the delicate tips break apart, so it should be checked early and drained promptly.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sauce. 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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