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Asperges En Branches a LA Sauce Blanche

A dish of asparagus served with a white sauce made from butter, flour, milk, nutmeg, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Asperges En Branches a LA Sauce Blanche

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Trim the asparagus and remove any tough ends.

  2. In a pot, bring water to a boil and add coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the asparagus and cook until tender, about 10-15 minutes.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a separate saucepan, melt butter and stir in flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually whisk in milk until the sauce thickens.

  3. Season the sauce with nutmeg and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the asparagus topped with the white sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that forms the base of the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Liquid that hydrates the roux and sets into a creamy, pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually whisk in milk. Adding milk slowly while whisking keeps the flour-butter roux smooth. Dumping it in at once can trap lumps of starch that do not dissolve evenly, and the sauce will not thicken uniformly.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

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