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Asparagus with Eggs

A dish of boiled asparagus and lettuce blended into a sauce, enriched with butter, flour, egg yolks, and served with poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 313 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Asparagus with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut off the tops of the asparagus and keep them in cold water until needed.

  2. Bring the milk to a boil, then add the asparagus stalks, lettuce, onion, bay leaf, thyme, and salt; simmer gently for about 20 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, and cook slightly.

  2. Add the vegetable puree and the milk it was cooked in, stirring until it boils.

  3. Cool slightly, then add the egg yolks and cook gently until thickened, stirring constantly.

Finish and serve

  1. Prepare the asparagus tops by boiling them for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Poach the eggs and trim them to a nice round shape.

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 + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + thymetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Provides the main vegetable flavour and body of the puree and the tender tops served with the eggs.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and carries flavour through the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as a roux with the butter, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce when gently cooked and add richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds creaminess.
Eggs
Serve as the main protein, setting firm when poached.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot when they go in, or cooked too fast, they can scramble and curdle. Cool slightly first and stir constantly over gentle heat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, milk, lettuce, thyme, butter, egg, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, milk, lettuce, thyme, butter, egg, flour. 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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