Skip to main content
Main

Asparagus, Spanish Style

A dish of cooked asparagus topped with soft-poached eggs and served with vinaigrette sauce.

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

Why it works: Asparagus and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,338 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Asparagus, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the asparagus by cooking it as described in a previous recipe.

  2. Drain the cooked asparagus on a napkin until dry.

  3. Place the asparagus on a dish.

Cook and serve

  1. Poach the eggs in the asparagus water.

  2. Serve each person one soft-poached egg alongside the asparagus and a bowl of vinaigrette sauce.

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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,338 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together573 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the vegetable base for the eggs and sauce.
Eggs
Provide richness and a runny yolk that coats the asparagus when cut.
Vinaigrette sauce
Adds acidity and sharpness that balances the richness of the egg yolk.

The step that matters

Poach the eggs in the asparagus water. Water kept at a gentle simmer helps the whites set around the yolk. A rolling boil can tear the whites apart, so the eggs should be lowered in carefully.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Asparagusthe original
  4. Welsh onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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.

You might also like

Asparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesCream of AsparagusCream of Asparagus38 recipesBoiled AsparagusBoiled Asparagus27 recipes