Skip to main content
Drink

Asparagus Sauce

A sauce made from boiled asparagus, veal gravy, egg yolks, and optional butter and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Asparagus Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Wash and drain the asparagus tops, cutting them into half-inch lengths.

  2. Boil the asparagus in plenty of salted water for about 15 minutes or until tender.

  3. Drain the asparagus in a strainer.

Serve

  1. To serve, mix the asparagus with thickened veal gravy and the yolks of two eggs, seasoning with salt and cayenne.

  2. Alternatively, mix the asparagus with melted butter and a squeeze of lemon juice.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus tops
Form the body of the sauce and give its fresh, vegetable flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce as they set gently with the warm asparagus.
Thickened veal gravy
Adds savoury depth and body to the asparagus in the first serving option.
Melted butter
Adds fat and a smooth, rich texture to the asparagus in the alternative serving option.

The step that matters

Boil the asparagus until tender. Boiling in plenty of salted water cooks the asparagus evenly and keeps it bright green. Undercooked pieces stay fibrous and make the sauce grainy, while overcooking dulls the colour and flavour.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, pepper, butter, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, pepper, butter, lemon. 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.

More asparagus sauce recipes

Shrimp 3 See all 46 →

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipesLemon EssenceLemon Essence8 recipes