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For Asparagus Puree

A creamy asparagus puree made with butter, flour, milk, egg yolks, vinegar, cream, mustard, cayenne, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

For Asparagus Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir well to combine.

  3. Gradually add the milk while stirring continuously until the mixture reaches a boiling point.

Finish and add asparagus

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks, tarragon vinegar, heavy cream, mixed mustard, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Fold in the cooked asparagus gently.

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. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the base and adds richness and flavour to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, stable sauce base.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce once thickened with flour.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken and set the sauce when stirred in off heat.
Heavy cream
Adds fat for a smoother, silkier texture and mouthfeel.
Cooked asparagus
Provides the main vegetable flavour and body for the puree.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble or curdle if they meet a hot, boiling mixture. Removing the pan from heat first lets them enrich the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, tarragon, vinegar, cream. 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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