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Asparagus with Mustard Sauce

A simple dish of cooked asparagus topped with a sauce of butter, mustard, pepper, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 213 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Asparagus with Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan without overheating it.

  2. Pour the melted butter onto a plate.

  3. Mix in the mustard, pepper, salt, and vinegar with a fork until well combined.

Serve

  1. Place the asparagus on a dish and dip the tops into the sauce.

  2. Pour any remaining sauce over the asparagus 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. Mustard + asparagustop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + asparagustop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the sauce.
Prepared mustard
Provides the sharp, tangy flavour that defines the sauce.
English vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the butter.

The step that matters

Melt the butter without overheating it. Overheated butter separates, with milk solids browning and the fat splitting from the liquid. That makes the sauce greasy and grainy instead of smooth, so it should be melted gently.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mustard, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mustard, pepper, vinegar. 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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