Skip to main content
Main

Asparagus, Boiled, American

Boiled asparagus served on toast with cold butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Asparagus and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,026 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Asparagus, Boiled, American

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the tips of the asparagus with coarse muslin and tie the bundles with tape.

  2. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the asparagus in the boiling water for about 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain the asparagus and place it on toast.

  3. Add small pieces of cold butter between the stalks before serving.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Is the main vegetable, cooked until tender in boiling water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty finish when added cold between the stalks.

The step that matters

Cooking the asparagus until tender. Asparagus cooks quickly, and overcooking softens the stalks and dulls the green colour. Checking for tenderness at the early end of the time range helps keep the texture firm and the colour bright.

“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.

More boiled asparagus recipes

on Toast 6with Toast 5 See all 76 →

You might also like

Asparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesCream of AsparagusCream of Asparagus38 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes