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Asparagus

A dish of boiled asparagus topped with a creamy sauce made from cornstarch, egg yolks, sweet cream, nutmeg, and asparagus cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 252 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Scrape and wash the asparagus, then tie it in equal-sized bunches.

  2. Place the bunches in plenty of boiling salted water.

  3. Cook until the stalks are tender, then remove and place on a dish with the heads lying one way.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, moisten cornstarch with sweet cream and mix in the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Add ½ cup cream and a little grated nutmeg to the mixture.

  3. Boil with 1 pint of the asparagus cooking liquid, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and pour the sauce over the asparagus.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Asparagus + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,338 recipes

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

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Asparagus + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together838 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce by gelatinising in the hot liquid, giving it body.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Asparagus cooking liquid
Forms the sauce's liquid base, carrying flavour from the asparagus.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce while it boils. Egg yolks can scramble if they overheat, and cornstarch can clump or stay grainy without constant stirring. Keeping it moving and taking it off the heat once thickened gives a smooth, lump-free sauce.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, nutmeg):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, nutmeg. 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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