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Asparagus

A buttery stew of asparagus, endive, lettuce, and onion thickened with flour and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the asparagus in cold water.

  2. Cut the asparagus to remove the tough ends.

  3. Chop the endive, lettuce, and onion finely.

Make the stew

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the asparagus and chopped vegetables to the melted butter.

  3. Stir and stew for 10 minutes.

  4. Season with pepper and salt, then sprinkle in the flour.

  5. Pour in the gravy and let it stew until the sauce thickens.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a serving dish and garnish with small tops of 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. Endive + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Asparagus + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Asparagus + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Endive + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 stew and adds its own vegetable flavour and texture.
Butter
Melted to cook the vegetables gently and carry flavour through the stew.
Flour
Sprinkled in to thicken the liquid and give the sauce body.
Gravy
Forms the stewing liquid, adding savoury flavour and moisture to the dish.
Endive
Chopped and stewed to add leafy texture and a slightly bitter note.

The step that matters

Sprinkle in the flour before adding the gravy. Flour needs to be cooked into the butter and vegetables before liquid is added, so it dissolves smoothly and thickens the sauce without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, endive, lettuce, butter, pepper, flour):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, endive, lettuce, butter, pepper, flour. 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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