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Asparagus Stewed

A dish of tender asparagus simmered in a butter, flour, and egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Asparagus Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add salt and baking soda.

  2. Add the asparagus and cook for 10-12 minutes until tender.

  3. Drain the asparagus and spread it on a clean cloth to dry.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a clean saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the asparagus and sauté for 8-10 minutes, shaking the pan often.

  3. Sprinkle in the flour and sugar, then pour in boiling water to nearly cover the asparagus.

  4. Boil rapidly until little liquid remains.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and serve hot, ensuring the sauce clings to the asparagus.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 carries the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth texture when stirred in.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the asparagus brown lightly as it sautés.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the sauce clings to the asparagus.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the sauce is too hot or boiling. Stir them in off the heat or at low heat, and keep stirring so the sauce stays smooth and clings to the asparagus.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, egg. 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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