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Creamed Asparagus

A creamy sauce of butter, corn starch, milk, and cream served over cooked asparagus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and asparagus share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 84 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Creamed Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the corn starch and salt until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the milk and cream, stirring constantly until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cooked asparagus and bring the mixture to a boil.

  2. Serve the creamed asparagus over buttered toast or butter thins.

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. Corn + asparagustop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together84 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich flavor.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.
Asparagus
Provides the main vegetable flavor and texture in the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring in the milk and cream. Corn starch can clump if liquid is added too fast or without stirring. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring constantly spreads the starch evenly so it hydrates and thickens into a smooth sauce.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusthe original
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, corn, milk, cream. 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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