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Asparagus

A dish of toasted bread topped with asparagus, butter, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the asparagus and cut off the roots.

  2. Toast the bread and butter the slices.

Assemble and cook

  1. Place the toast in a dish and arrange the asparagus on top.

  2. Add a small piece of butter on the asparagus and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover and cook for 2 hours at full lamp power.

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
Forms the main topping and becomes tender as it cooks, giving the dish its flavour.
Bread
Provides a toasted base that holds the asparagus and soaks up its juices.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the asparagus a richer, softer texture.

The step that matters

Cover and cook for 2 hours at full lamp power. Long cooking under intense radiant heat can make asparagus soft and dull in colour, as chlorophyll breaks down, and can dry out or scorch the toast. Watch closely and check doneness before the full time has passed.

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.

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