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Asparagus

Roasted asparagus cooked in a paper bag with water and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Asparagus

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim and clean the asparagus.

  2. Tie the asparagus and place it in a paper bag.

  3. Add ¼ cup of water and ¼ teaspoon of salt to the bag.

Roast

  1. Seal the bag and place it on the grid in the oven.

  2. Cook for 35 to 45 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Main vegetable; trapped steam from the water gently cooks it until tender.

The step that matters

Seal the bag tightly. The sealed bag traps steam from the water, cooking the asparagus gently and evenly. If steam escapes, the spears can dry out or cook unevenly.

“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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