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Asparagus on Toast

A simple dish of boiled asparagus served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie the asparagus stalks in small bunches.

Cook

  1. Boil the bunches in a small amount of salted water until tender.

  2. Toast enough slices of bread for each bunch of asparagus.

  3. Butter the hot toast.

Serve

  1. Place a bunch of asparagus on each slice of toast.

  2. Add a little butter to the cooking water and pour it over the asparagus and toast.

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 stalks
Provide the tender vegetable that forms the main part of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the hot toast and to the finished sauce.
Slices of bread
Provide a crisp, absorbent base that holds the asparagus and butter.

The step that matters

Boil the bunches until tender. Asparagus cooks quickly, and overcooking makes it soft and dull in colour, while undercooking leaves it fibrous. Checking for tenderness at the earliest point keeps the texture pleasant.

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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