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Asparagus

Boiled asparagus served on toast, with either a melted butter and lemon sauce or a creamed milk or cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the asparagus

  1. Boil the asparagus in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Carefully remove the asparagus, preventing the heads from falling off.

Serve on toast

  1. Lay the asparagus on toast and untie the bundles, allowing them to fall in one direction.

  2. Pour melted butter mixed with lemon juice over the asparagus or serve separately.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a flat saucepan, place tender asparagus pieces and cover with milk or cream.

  2. Heat until boiling, then add butter mixed with flour, and season with salt and pepper.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 and becomes tender when boiled.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and a creamy body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and flavour to the sauce and topping.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce as its starch swells when heated.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour to the boiling milk or cream. Flour thickens liquid only when its starch is heated in the liquid, and it clumps if dropped in dry. Mixing it with butter first spreads the starch evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of lumping.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, 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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