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Dessert

Asparagus Pease for the Second Course

A buttery asparagus dish flavored with parsley, green onions, mint, flour, sugar, egg yolks, cream, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,198 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Asparagus Pease for the Second Course

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and cut young asparagus into small, equal pieces, discarding woody parts.

  2. Boil asparagus in salted water, then drain and dry with a cloth.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry asparagus in butter with parsley, green onions, and mint.

  2. Dredge flour over the mixture, add sugar, and moisten with boiling water.

  3. Boil quickly, then remove the parsley and onion bundle.

  4. Thicken the sauce with beaten egg yolks mixed with cream or melted butter, salt, and grated nutmeg.

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. Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Asparagus + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Young asparagus
Forms the main vegetable body of the dish and carries its fresh flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while frying, carrying the herb aroma through the dish.
Flour
Dredged over the mixture to thicken the liquid into a cohesive sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce on gentle heating and add richness and body.
Cream or melted butter
Adds fat and smoothness, enriching the sauce and softening its texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the sauce boils after they go in, the proteins can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth sauce.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, butter, parsley, onion, flour, sugar, egg. 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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