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Pointes D’ Asparagus

A side dish of boiled asparagus tips simmered in bechamel sauce, sugar, sea salt, parsley, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 566 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pointes D’ Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cut the green tops of asparagus to ½ inch long.

  2. Boil in salted water until tender, then drain on a towel or sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine asparagus with bechamel sauce, sugar, coarse sea salt, and chopped parsley.

  2. Simmer for a few minutes, then add butter and shake well 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 + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 tops
Provide the main vegetable body and tender texture of the dish.
Bechamel sauce
Adds creamy moisture and richness that coats the asparagus.
Butter
Adds fat and a rich flavor when shaken into the warm sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer after combining with bechamel. Simmering gently heats the sauce through without boiling it, which helps keep the bechamel smooth rather than separating or thickening unevenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, sauce, sugar, butter. 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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