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Asparagus Peas

A dish of boiled asparagus cooked like peas, finished with butter, cream, and sugar, served on toasted French rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Asparagus Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scale the asparagus and cut it into pieces the size of peas.

  2. Wash the asparagus and place it in a stewpan with hot water and salt.

  3. Boil until nearly done, then strain and reserve the liquid.

Make the sauce and cook

  1. Reduce the reserved liquid, then add butter, cream, and sugar.

  2. Add the asparagus back to the pan and stew until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the asparagus on top of toasted and buttered French rolls.

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

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 body of the dish, providing its texture and fresh vegetable flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the reduced liquid.
Cream
Thickens the reduced liquid and adds moisture and a silky texture.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the vegetable's natural bitterness.

The step that matters

Reduce the reserved liquid. Reducing concentrates the cooking liquid's flavour and body before cream and butter go in. If it is not reduced enough, the sauce stays thin; if it is over-reduced, it can turn salty and pasty once the cream is added.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, sugar, 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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