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Asparagus, Tinned

A dish of canned asparagus prepared by draining, cooking in hot water, and serving with melted butter or white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 ↓

Asparagus, Tinned

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Do not heat the asparagus in the tin as it spoils the flavor.

  2. Open the tin at the bottom and gently drain off all liquid.

  3. Cut away the bottom of the tin entirely and slide the asparagus onto a deep dish.

Heat and serve

  1. Place the dish in a frying pan filled with hot water and cover it.

  2. Heat over a slow fire for ten minutes.

  3. Gently turn the asparagus with an enamel slice.

  4. Serve with plain melted butter or good 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. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Provides the main vegetable and its tender texture once gently heated.
Plain melted butter or good white sauce
Adds fat and richness to the mild asparagus flavor when served.

The step that matters

Do not heat the asparagus in the tin. Heating the asparagus in its can spoils the flavor, so it is moved to a dish and warmed gently in hot water instead.

“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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