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Asparagus with Dutch Sauce

A dish of boiled asparagus served on toast with a creamy Dutch sauce made from butter, flour, milk, stock, lemon, egg yolks, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Asparagus with Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Pick and scrape the asparagus, cut into equal lengths, and tie into small bundles.

  2. Soak the bundles in salt water for 2 hours.

Cook and serve the asparagus

  1. Boil salted water, add the bundles, and cook gently for 15‑20 minutes.

  2. Remove the asparagus and dip the toast in the boiling water.

  3. Serve the asparagus on the toast after removing the strings.

Make the Dutch sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix butter and flour, then add milk and stock; stir until it boils.

  2. Add lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste; remove from heat and stir in egg yolks until smooth.

  3. Serve the sauce hot alongside the asparagus.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 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

Asparagus
Forms the main vegetable body of the dish, carrying the flavour and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture when stirred in off heat.
Milk
Adds liquid and creaminess to the sauce, mellowing its flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks in off the heat. Egg yolks thicken at around 160°F and can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from heat before adding them lets them thicken gently into a smooth sauce.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lemon, milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Asparagusthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, milk, egg, pepper. 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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