Skip to main content
Side

Asparagus Peas for the Second Course, an Entre- Mets.

A side dish of boiled asparagus mixed with butter, herbs, flour, sugar, and thickened with egg yolks and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,198 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Asparagus Peas for the Second Course, an Entre- Mets.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Pick and cut the asparagus into small, equal bits, discarding any woody parts.

  2. Boil the asparagus in salted water, then drain and dry them with a cloth.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the asparagus in butter with parsley, green onions, and mint.

  2. Dredge flour over the mixture, add sugar, and moisten with boiling water.

  3. Boil quickly until reduced, then remove the parsley and onions.

  4. Thicken the sauce with beaten egg yolks mixed with cream or melted butter, and season with salt and nutmeg.

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. Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together566 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young asparagus
Forms the main body of the dish and gives its tender, fresh texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the flavour of the herbs during frying.
Flour
Dusted over the mixture to thicken the liquid into a sauce.
Boiling water
Moistens the floured mixture so it can cook down into a sauce.
2 egg yolks
Thickens the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth body when gently heated.
Cream or melted butter
Adds fat and smoothness to the egg yolks, enriching the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so if the sauce boils after they are added it can scramble and turn grainy. Add them off the heat or over very gentle heat, stirring constantly.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Mintthe original

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

You might also like

Onion PuddingOnion Pudding9 recipesEggplant CakesEggplant Cakes34 recipesEscalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)Escalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)25 recipesParsnip CroquettesParsnip Croquettes12 recipes