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To Stew Asparagus

A stew of asparagus cooked with butter, cream, sugar, flour, and water, served with toasted French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Stew Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice and cut the asparagus into pea-sized pieces, washing them before use.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the asparagus, hot water, and salt; boil until nearly done.

  2. Strain the asparagus, reserving the cooking liquid; reduce the liquid until nearly gone.

  3. Add butter, cream, sugar, flour, and enough water to thicken the mixture; stir well.

  4. Return the asparagus to the pan and stew until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the asparagus on a dish with the toasted and buttered French roll underneath.

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

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 and gives its vegetable flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's texture.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a stew-like sauce as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the vegetable's flavour.

The step that matters

Reduce the cooking liquid until nearly gone. The liquid is the base of the sauce. Reducing it concentrates its flavour before the butter, cream and flour are added, so the sauce tastes rich rather than watery.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, sugar, 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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