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Chicken with Asparagus Tips

A creamy chicken and asparagus tip dish with egg yolk butter base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken with Asparagus Tips

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, rub the egg yolks and butter together to form a paste.

  2. Add the cream and stir until thoroughly blended.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Combine and heat

  1. Gently fold in the asparagus tips and chicken.

  2. Cook for a few minutes until heated through.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + asparagustop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken breast
Provides the main protein and bulk of the dish.
Asparagus tips
Add tender texture and a fresh, green vegetable flavor.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky body.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed with butter, they thicken and enrich the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping form the paste with the yolks.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the asparagus tips and chicken. Cooked chicken and asparagus are already tender, so vigorous stirring can break them apart and make the dish mushy. Folding keeps the pieces intact, and gentle heating just until warmed through avoids drying or toughening the chicken and overcooking the cream sauce.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, cream, egg, pepper):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, cream, egg, pepper. 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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