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Cream Asparagus

A creamy asparagus dish served with hot buttered toast cubes.

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 1 quart of milk.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of cornstarch, ¼ teaspoon of salt, ½ teaspoon of white pepper, and a big piece of butter to the milk.

  3. When creamy, add both the strained stalks and the heads of asparagus, 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
Forms the main body of the dish, giving it its vegetable flavour and tender texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, providing richness and smoothness.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce its creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the milk and cornstarch in the double boiler. Cornstarch thickens only when heated gently and stirred, and it can clump or scorch if the heat is too high. A double boiler keeps the sauce steady so it becomes smooth and creamy rather than lumpy or burnt.

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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