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Asparagus

A boiled asparagus dish served with melted butter, Hollandaise sauce, or green sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and lemon work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 704 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stand the asparagus in a soup plate of cold water with cut ends down for up to 2 days.

  2. Trim the asparagus to the same length and scrape the white part lightly.

  3. Wash the asparagus thoroughly in cold water.

  4. Tie the asparagus into bundles of about a dozen heads each with tape.

  5. Soak the bundles in cold water for 30 minutes, then drain.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil plenty of salted water (1 dessert spoon of salt per quart) in a saucepan.

  2. Add the asparagus and boil gently for 25-30 minutes until tender.

  3. Drain the asparagus and remove the tape.

  4. Serve in a hot dish with melted butter, Hollandaise sauce, or green sauce.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Asparagus + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,212 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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
Is the main vegetable, cooked by boiling until tender throughout.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when melted over the cooked spears.

The step that matters

Boil gently until tender. Boiling vigorously can break up the delicate tips and cook the stalks unevenly. A gentle simmer in well-salted water cooks the thick stalks through while the tips stay intact and tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, butter, flour, egg, sugar, lemon, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, butter, flour, egg, sugar, lemon, cream. 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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