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Asparagus

A boiled asparagus dish served on buttered toast, optionally topped with hollandaise sauce or French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the asparagus stalks and soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

Cook

  1. Tie the stalks into bundles and place them in salted boiling water.

  2. Cook for about 20 minutes or until tender but not limp.

Serve

  1. Remove the strings and place the asparagus on buttered toast.

  2. Serve with melted butter, Hollandaise sauce, or as a cold salad with French dressing.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. 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 stalks
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender texture that contrasts with the toast.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the buttered toast and to the melted butter topping.

The step that matters

Cook until tender but not limp. Asparagus turns soft and limp when overcooked, as its cell walls break down with prolonged heat. Checking for tenderness early keeps the stalks firm and bright green.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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