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Asparagus Points

A dish of small asparagus pieces cooked with butter, cream, and gravy or béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Asparagus Points

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tender parts of the asparagus into small pieces.

  2. Boil the chopped asparagus in a saucepan for 20 minutes.

Finish in butter

  1. Transfer the asparagus to a stewpan with butter.

  2. Brown the asparagus in the stewpan.

  3. Add cream and gravy or béchamel sauce to the stewpan.

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

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. 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
The main vegetable, whose tender pieces supply the dish's flavor and body.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and helps the asparagus brown in the pan.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Gravy or béchamel sauce
Adds moisture and body, binding the asparagus into a creamy mixture.

The step that matters

Browning the asparagus in the stewpan. The pieces must be fairly dry and spread out so they brown rather than steam. Surface browning in butter adds savory, toasted flavor that boiled asparagus lacks.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Onionfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, 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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