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Asparagus Sauce

A buttery sauce with white sauce, lemon, and optional spinach, served over boiled asparagus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 274 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Asparagus Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cut off the green ends of the asparagus.

  2. Boil the asparagus in salted water for 10 minutes, then drain well.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Fry the asparagus in the butter for 8 minutes.

  3. Add the white sauce, season with salt and pepper, and add spinach greening if desired.

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 + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

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

  3. Lemon + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Forms the bulk of the sauce and gives it its main flavour.
White sauce
Provides the creamy body and smooth texture of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour as the asparagus fries.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Drain the asparagus well after boiling. Water left on the asparagus dilutes the butter and white sauce, thinning the texture. It also stops the asparagus from frying properly in the butter.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, sauce, butter, spinach, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, sauce, butter, spinach, 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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