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Asparagus, Pompadour

A sauce of butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, and spices served over boiled asparagus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Asparagus, Pompadour

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Tie asparagus into bundles and cut off the hard ends, leaving only tender parts.

  2. Boil asparagus in salted water until tender, then drain and keep warm.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine butter, salt, mace, red pepper, egg yolks, lemon juice, and cold water.

  2. Place the saucepan in a pot of boiling water (double boiler) and whisk continuously until the sauce thickens.

Assemble and serve

  1. Remove from heat and arrange asparagus on a dish, layering with two coats of sauce.

  2. Serve hot, spooning sauce over asparagus; eat with a fork.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together704 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 carries the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with butter and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Whisking the sauce over a double boiler. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Gentle indirect heat from simmering water, with constant whisking, lets them thicken into a smooth emulsion rather than curdling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, butter, pepper, egg, lemon. 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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