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Asparagus Stew'ed

A stew of asparagus cooked with butter, cream, and egg yolk, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 Stew'ed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the points and tender parts of the asparagus into pieces the size of large peas.

Make the stew

  1. Place them in a pan with a little water, add salt and baking soda, and stew until tender.

  2. Add butter, white pepper, and powdered sugar, and gently stir.

  3. Mix cream and the beaten egg yolk together, then add to the pan just before serving.

Serve

  1. Pour the asparagus mixture over a slice of toasted bread and serve immediately.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Asparagus + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 stew and provides its vegetable flavour and tender texture.
Egg yolk
Enriches the stew and thickens it gently when heated with the cream.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the stew.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savoury flavour.
Baking soda
Raises the pan's alkalinity, helping the asparagus soften and keep its bright green colour while stewing.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and egg yolk. The yolk can curdle or scramble if the mixture boils. Adding it just before serving, off the heat or at a gentle simmer, keeps the stew smooth and thick.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, butter, sugar, cream, egg, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, butter, sugar, cream, egg, bread. 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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