Skip to main content
Main

Asparagus Au Gratin

A baked asparagus dish with white sauce, cheese, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Asparagus Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the asparagus until tender, then cut into 1‑inch pieces.

  2. Mix the asparagus with the white sauce, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a gratin dish and smooth it down.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle the grated cheese and bread crumbs on top, then dot with butter.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until brown and serve immediately.

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. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Asparagus + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its vegetable texture and flavor.
White sauce
Binds the asparagus and keeps the dish moist and creamy as it bakes.
Grated american cheese
Melts into the topping and browns during baking, adding savory flavor and a golden crust.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp topping that browns in the oven and contrasts with the soft filling.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the topping brown and gives it a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. Baking at 400°F until the topping browns develops flavor through the Maillard reaction, but overbaking can dry the sauce and toughen the cheese, so watch the color rather than the clock.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, pepper, cheese, 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 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes