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To Boil Asparagus

A boiled asparagus dish served with toasted bread, butter, and optional vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the stems of the asparagus lightly from one to two inches of the green points.

  2. Place the asparagus in cold water.

  3. Tie the asparagus in equal-sized bunches.

  4. Cut the large ends evenly.

Cook

  1. Boil plenty of water with coarse sea salt.

  2. Toast the bread slices until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Boil the asparagus until tender.

  4. Remove the asparagus immediately to preserve color and flavor.

  5. Dip the toasted bread quickly into the boiling water.

Serve

  1. Place the asparagus on top with the points meeting in the center.

  2. Serve with melted butter and vinegar if desired.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Asparagus + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

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

  4. Asparagus + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
The main vegetable, whose tender stalks form the centre of the dish.
Bread
Toasting gives browning and a crisp, savoury base for the asparagus.
Butter
Melted over the hot asparagus, it adds richness and fat for a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Remove the asparagus immediately once tender. Asparagus turns from bright green to dull olive and goes soft and mushy if it keeps cooking in the hot water. Lifting it out as soon as it is tender preserves both colour and texture.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, vinegar. 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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