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Asparagus Suedoise Sauce

A chilled asparagus dish served with iced suedoise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 128 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Asparagus Suedoise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ice timbal

  1. Fill a timbal mold with plain cold water.

  2. Place it in the ice for 2.5 to 3 hours, turning occasionally.

  3. Dip the mold in tepid water.

  4. Wipe the bottom with a clean cloth.

  5. Turn out the ice onto a serving dish.

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Open a tin of asparagus.

  2. Place it on pounded ice until perfectly cold.

  3. Drain the asparagus on a clean cloth.

  4. Cut off the hard ends.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange it in the center of the ice timbal.

  2. Garnish the top with fresh chervil.

  3. Serve with iced suedoise sauce in a sauceboat.

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 + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together128 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chervil + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together262 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Asparagus + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together573 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 filling, giving the dish its body and its tender, delicate bite.
Iced suedoise sauce
Adds a cool, creamy richness that contrasts with the chilled asparagus.

The step that matters

Dip the mold in tepid water. Brief warming loosens the frozen water from the mold walls so the ice timbal releases whole. Too little warmth tears the ice, and too much melts its surface and weakens the shape.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chervil, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chervil, sauce. 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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