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Asparagus Sauce

A sauce made from boiled asparagus, butter, parsley, green onions, salt, sugar, and white stock.

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 ↓

Asparagus Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Break the asparagus in the tender part and wash well.

  2. Put the asparagus into boiling salted water until tender.

  3. Remove from water and place in cold water to cool, then drain on a cloth.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter with parsley and green onions over high heat.

  2. Add the asparagus and fry for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in salt, sugar, and white stock, then simmer for another 5 minutes.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Add spinach coloring if needed.

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. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Asparagus + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,212 recipes

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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 and flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavor and gives the sauce richness.
White stock
Adds liquid so the mixture can simmer and loosen into a sauce.
Sugar
Rounds out the flavor and balances the vegetable taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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