Skip to main content
Main

Asparagus with Dutch Sauce

A dish of boiled asparagus served on toast with a butter‑flour‑milk‑stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Asparagus with Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Pick and scrape the asparagus.

  2. Cut it into equal lengths and tie it in small bundles.

  3. Soak in saltwater for 2 hours.

  4. Boil plenty of salted water.

Cook the asparagus

  1. Add the asparagus bundles and cook gently for 15-20 minutes.

  2. Remove the asparagus.

  3. Dip the toast in the boiling water.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, mix the butter and flour.

  2. Add the milk and stock and stir until it boils.

  3. Add lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Stir in the egg yolks until smooth.

  6. Serve the asparagus neatly on the toast after removing the strings.

  7. Serve the sauce hot alongside 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Asparagus + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together704 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Forms the main vegetable body of the dish, providing the cooked texture and flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavour into the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture into a smooth, body-giving sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, adding creaminess and mild sweetness.
Egg yolks
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its fat.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heating, but if the sauce is too hot they scramble and turn grainy. Removing the pan from the heat before adding them lets them thicken smoothly.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Asparagusthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, milk, egg, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesAsparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesCream of AsparagusCream of Asparagus38 recipes