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Sauce

Sauce for Asparagus

A creamy sauce made with asparagus juice, eggs, milk, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and lemon work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 704 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sauce for Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg mixture

  1. Beat the eggs lightly in a bowl.

  2. Combine asparagus juice, sugar, vinegar, and salt in a saucepan. Heat until boiling.

  3. Gradually mix the hot mixture with the beaten eggs, stirring constantly.

  4. Return the mixture to the stove and cook until it thickens.

Make the butter base

  1. Melt the butter in a double boiler.

  2. Sift in the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Heat the milk and add it to the butter and flour mixture, along with salt and red pepper.

Combine and finish

  1. Combine the two mixtures and stir until it reaches a soft custard consistency.

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. Asparagus + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together704 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they cook and give it a rich, custard-like body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries flavour through the flour base.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter mixture into a smooth base.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the sauce its body.
Asparagus juice
Provides the main vegetable flavour and liquid for the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually mix the hot mixture with the beaten eggs, stirring constantly. Adding hot liquid to eggs too quickly can scramble them. Pouring slowly while stirring gently raises the egg temperature evenly, so the eggs thicken the sauce smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, lemon, egg, flour, butter, milk):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Asparagusthe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, lemon, egg, flour, butter, milk. 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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