Skip to main content
Main

To Boil Asparagus

A boiled asparagus dish served on toasted bread with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Boil Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a pot with plenty of water and add the coarse sea salt.

  2. Bring the water to a boil.

  3. Scrape the asparagus stalks until they are white.

  4. Cut the asparagus to 2-3 inches below the green part.

  5. Place the scraped asparagus in a pan of cold water.

  6. Tie the asparagus in small bundles with tape.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the asparagus to the boiling water and boil it for 1 to 1.25 hours.

  2. Toast enough slices of bread to cover the dish.

  3. Drain the asparagus.

  4. Use the cooking liquid to moisten the toast.

  5. Arrange the asparagus on the toast with the heads pointing towards the center and the stalks spreading outward.

  6. Serve with melted butter.

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
Is the main vegetable; its tender stalks are cooked through by long gentle boiling.
Bread slices
Form the base that soaks up the cooking liquid and butter for flavour and moisture.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour across the asparagus and toast.

The step that matters

Boil the asparagus for the full time in well-salted water. Asparagus needs a long, vigorous boil to soften thick stalks fully. Salting the water seasons the vegetable from the outside in, so the stalks should be cooked through and evenly seasoned before draining.

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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesAsparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipes