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Asparagus Sauce

A creamy sauce made with asparagus, cream, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Asparagus Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Boil the asparagus until tender.

  2. Cut the boiled asparagus into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, stew the asparagus in the cream, adding salt and pepper.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour to form a paste.

  3. Add the butter‑flour paste to the saucepan to thicken the 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Asparagus
Forms the main body of the sauce and gives it its flavour.
Cream
Provides richness and moisture, making the sauce smooth and creamy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and combines with flour to form a thickening paste.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour paste to the saucepan. If the paste is added without being mixed smooth, or the sauce is not simmered after adding it, lumps can form and the flour taste may remain. Stirring while it heats lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

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