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Asparagus, Boiled

A simple dish of boiled asparagus served on dry toast with butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Asparagus, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the asparagus to the same length by aligning the green points and cutting the stalks evenly with a sharp knife.

Cook

  1. Boil salted water in a pot and add the asparagus.

  2. Cook for 15 to 25 minutes, depending on thickness.

Serve

  1. Serve the asparagus on dry toast and provide butter sauce separately in a tureen.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

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

  3. Asparagus + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together573 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 body of the dish and carries its tender, mild vegetable flavour.
Butter sauce
Adds richness and fat that complements the mild flavour of the cooked asparagus.
Dry toast
Provides a crisp, absorbent base that holds the asparagus above the plate.

The step that matters

Cook for 15 to 25 minutes, depending on thickness. Asparagus cooks unevenly if stalks differ in thickness, so thin spears turn mushy while thick ones stay firm. Matching stalk sizes and checking for tenderness helps the spears cook evenly.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce. 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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