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Asparagus Tips for Garnish

A simple garnish of blanched asparagus tips tossed in butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and veloute sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Asparagus Tips for Garnish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the tips of the asparagus.

  2. Blanch the asparagus tips in boiling water for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Toss the blanched tips in a little butter.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and a little grated nutmeg.

  3. Add veloute sauce and mix well.

  4. Serve with meat entree.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Asparagus + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 tips
Provide the main vegetable body and fresh, tender-crisp texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky coating that carries seasoning across the tips.
Veloute sauce
Supplies a smooth, creamy body that binds and moistens the asparagus.

The step that matters

Blanch the asparagus tips in boiling water for a few minutes. Brief blanching in boiling water sets the color and keeps the tips tender-crisp. Leaving them in too long turns them soft and dull, and the texture is lost before the sauce is added.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, 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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