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With Asparagus

A quick egg dish with boiled asparagus, buttered and cooked in a pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

With Asparagus

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the asparagus in water with salt until cooked, then drain and chop finely.

  2. Beat the chopped asparagus with eggs and milk.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan, tossing continually until cooked.

  3. Serve on a dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Asparagus + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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

Eggs
Set when heated, forming the structure of the omelette.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps keep the egg from sticking to the pan.
Milk
Adds moisture, keeping the cooked egg softer and more tender.
Asparagus
Provides the main vegetable flavour and some texture within the egg.

The step that matters

Tossing the egg mixture while it cooks. Eggs set quickly over direct heat. Continual tossing keeps curds small and tender, while leaving them still can make the omelette tough and dry in patches.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Asparagusthe original
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, 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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