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Asparagus Points

A dish of boiled asparagus served with a veal gravy sauce enriched with egg yolks, butter, lemon, salt, and white pepper.

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 Points

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Boil the asparagus points for 10 to 15 minutes, or longer if not tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the thickened veal gravy with the egg yolks.

  2. Add the melted butter, lemon juice, salt, and white pepper to the mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve the asparagus with the sauce 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. 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. Lemon + white peppertop 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and gravy, giving the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a silky texture.
Thickened veal gravy
Provides the savoury base and body of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the melted butter to the yolk mixture. Egg yolks thicken and emulsify with fat only when the butter is added gradually and warm enough to blend. Adding it too fast or too hot can split the sauce, leaving it greasy and grainy.

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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