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Asparagus As Young Peas

A creamy asparagus dish cooked like peas, finished with butter, mint, cream, powdered sugar, egg yolks, and topped with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Asparagus As Young Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cut the asparagus into small pieces no larger than peas.

  2. Boil the asparagus in water with salt for 10-12 minutes.

  3. Drain the asparagus on a clean napkin for 1-2 minutes.

Make the creamed sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the asparagus with butter, mint, cream, salt, and powdered sugar.

  2. Stew for 10 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and cook for 3 more minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the asparagus on a dish with the sauce and top with croutons or sippets of fried bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Asparagus + minttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together153 recipes

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

  5. Asparagus + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 and provides its vegetable flavour and texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness so the sauce stays silky rather than thick and dry.
Beaten egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook gently, giving it a custard-like body.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the pan is too hot or they are added to boiling liquid. Keeping the heat low and stirring constantly keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, butter, cream, sugar, egg, bread. 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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