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Cream Asparagus

A creamy asparagus dish served with hot buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cut asparagus into small pieces, keeping the heads separate.

  2. Boil the heads and stalks in separate dishes until very tender.

  3. Strain the stalks through a colander.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk, then add cornstarch, salt, white pepper, and butter.

  2. When creamy, add both the strained asparagus and the heads, along with a dash of nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Serve with cubes of hot buttered toast.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Asparagus + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Asparagus + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Provides the main vegetable flavor and tender texture of the dish.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the milk gently in a double boiler. Milk scorches and can curdle or form a skin if overheated, and cornstarch needs steady heat to thicken smoothly without lumps. A double boiler keeps the temperature gentle and even.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, milk, butter, nutmeg. 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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