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Sauce

Asparagus Sauce, for Lamb Chops

A sauce made from boiled asparagus, veal gravy, egg yolks, and seasonings, served with lamb chops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and lemon work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 704 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Asparagus Sauce, for Lamb Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Wash the asparagus well and drain.

  2. Boil the asparagus in plenty of salted water until tender, about 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the asparagus thoroughly in a hot strainer.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the asparagus with thickened veal gravy and egg yolks, seasoning with salt and cayenne or white pepper.

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

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

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

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

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

  3. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young asparagus
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it its green vegetable flavour.
Thickened veal gravy
Provides savoury body and liquid so the asparagus blends into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce through gentle heat and add richness and a silky texture.
Good melted butter
Adds fat for a rich, glossy finish in the alternative version.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the asparagus and butter.

The step that matters

Draining the asparagus thoroughly. Excess water dilutes the sauce and keeps it thin, so the asparagus should be well drained before it is mixed with the gravy or butter.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, veal, egg, 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.

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