Why it works: Asparagus and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,026 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Boiled Asparagus
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut off the lower parts of the asparagus where they snap.
Wash the asparagus and tie them together.
Cook and serve
Cook in boiling salted water for 20 to 35 minutes, keeping the tips out of the water for the first 10 minutes.
Drain the asparagus and place on a hot serving dish.
Spread with butter and sprinkle with salt.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,026 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Asparagus
- Is the main vegetable, cooked until tender while the tips steam above the water.
- Butter
- Adds richness and moisture, melting over the hot spears to give flavour.
The step that matters
Keeping the tips out of the water for the first 10 minutes. The stalks are denser than the tips, so they need longer in the boiling water. Keeping the tips above the water lets them steam gently, so they cook through without turning mushy.
“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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