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Asparagus and Seakale

A boiled vegetable dish of asparagus and sea kale served with oil, vinegar, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 138 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Asparagus and Seakale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the asparagus and sea kale carefully.

  2. Tie them in little bundles with the heads level. Trim the stalks to be level with a sharp knife.

Cook

  1. Boil water and add a good amount of coarse sea salt and a little sugar.

  2. Place the trimmed bundles into the boiling water.

  3. Drain the vegetables carefully after cooking.

Serve

  1. Serve au naturel with Dutch sauce or a dressing of oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add a few drops of tarragon vinegar to the Dutch sauce before serving.

  3. Place the drained vegetables in a hot dish and top with a pat of fresh butter.

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. Asparagus + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together138 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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, with tender heads and firm stalks that hold their shape when boiled.
Sea kale
Provides the main vegetable, with a tender texture and a mild, slightly salty flavour.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, savoury coating to the hot vegetables.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables carefully after cooking. Asparagus and sea kale are delicate, and overcooking or rough handling makes them soft and broken. Draining promptly and gently keeps the stalks intact and stops excess water from diluting the sauce or butter.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, pepper, butter, tarragon):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, pepper, butter, tarragon. 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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