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To Boil Asparagus

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Boil Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the asparagus and tie them in small bunches.

Cook

  1. Boil them in a large pan of salted water.

  2. Toast slices of white bread and dip them in the boiling water.

Serve

  1. Lay the asparagus on the toasted bread and pour rich melted butter over them.

  2. Serve hot.

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
Is the main vegetable, cooked tender in boiling salted water.
White bread
Forms a toasted base that soaks up moisture and butter under the asparagus.
Rich melted butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the asparagus and bread for flavour and smooth texture.

The step that matters

Boil them in a large pan of salted water.. Asparagus cooks quickly, so overcooking turns it soft and dull. Using a large pan with plenty of boiling water keeps the temperature up and the cooking even.

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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