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Boiled Asparagus

A simple boiled asparagus dish served with optional buttered toast and a milk or cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Boiled Asparagus

Why it works: Asparagus and cream work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 838 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Boiled Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shave off the hard outside of the asparagus and cut away the woody lower part.

  2. Rinse the asparagus in cold water and tie them in bunches.

Cook the asparagus

  1. Boil plenty of water with a little salt, then add the asparagus.

  2. Cook for about 20 minutes until tender, but do not overcook.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the strings and place the asparagus on a serving dish.

  2. For the sauce, if using milk, combine it with butter and white pepper.

  3. Serve the asparagus over buttered toast, if desired, with some of the cooking liquid.

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.

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.

  1. Asparagus + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together838 recipes

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

  2. Cream + white peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes
  3. Asparagus + white peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together120 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Forms the main vegetable; cooking softens its fibres until tender.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and body to the sauce, mellowing the flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the milk-based sauce.

The step that matters

Cook for about 20 minutes until tender, but do not overcook. Asparagus softens as its cell walls break down with heat. Past the tender point, it turns dull, mushy and loses its fresh flavour and bright colour, so check for tenderness before draining.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, cream. 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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