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Asparagus Sauce

A sauce made from boiled asparagus, butter, white sauce, lemon juice, and optional spinach coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 274 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Asparagus Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cut off the green ends of the asparagus.

  2. Boil the asparagus in salted water for 10 minutes, then drain well.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and fry the asparagus for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the white sauce, salt, pepper, and spinach coloring if desired.

  3. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  4. Pass the mixture through a fine strainer or tammy cloth.

  5. Reheat the sauce, add the lemon juice, and serve as required.

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 + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Asparagus + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together704 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the sauce once cooked and strained.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
White sauce
Gives body and thickness, helping the puree hold together.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidity that lifts the flavour of the asparagus.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through a fine strainer or tammy cloth. Asparagus fibres stay stringy unless the cooked mixture is pressed through a fine sieve, which gives the sauce a smooth texture.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, sauce, butter, lemon, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Spinachthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, sauce, butter, lemon, 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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