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To Dress Asparagus

A simple dish of boiled asparagus served with toasted bread and melted butter.

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 ↓

To Dress Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Scrape the asparagus stalks until they look white.

  2. Cut the stalks evenly.

Cook the asparagus

  1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.

  2. Add the asparagus in small bundles to the boiling water.

  3. Cook until tender, being careful not to overcook.

Toast and serve

  1. Cut a slice of bread about half an inch thick and toast it until brown on both sides.

  2. Dip the toast in the asparagus cooking liquid and place it on a serving dish.

  3. Pour melted butter over the toast and arrange the asparagus on top with the tips facing outward.

  4. Serve the remaining butter in a separate 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. 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
Forms the main vegetable component, cooked until tender to be eaten whole.
Bread
Toasting browns the surface and forms a crisp base that soaks up flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and its melted form coats the toast and asparagus.

The step that matters

Cook until tender, being careful not to overcook.. Asparagus turns soft and dull green when overcooked, because heat breaks down its cell walls and pigments. Stopping at tender keeps the texture firm and the color bright.

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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