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Asparagus

A dish of boiled asparagus served on toasted bread with a butter and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Chop off the green ends of the asparagus and the remainder of the stalks.

  2. Boil the asparagus until tender.

  3. Season the boiled asparagus with salt and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare toasted bread in a deep dish.

  2. Mix equal parts of flour and butter to a cream.

  3. Slowly add enough asparagus water or hot water to make a sauce.

  4. Boil the sauce once.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the asparagus on the toast.

  2. Pour the sauce over the asparagus on toast.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 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. Asparagus + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Young asparagus
Forms the tender vegetable topping that is the main element of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the flour form a smooth roux-style base.
Toasted bread
Provides a crisp base that soaks up the sauce and holds the asparagus.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and butter into a smooth cream. Flour must be fully blended with the butter before liquid is added; otherwise lumps form that the sauce cannot easily lose, so the sauce turns grainy.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, flour, butter. 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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