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Asparagus (Cook only the tender green)
Cook only the tender, green stalks; Cut them of equal lengths and boil in water with a little salt till tender. While the asparagus is cooking prepare some nicely toasted bread, lay the asparagus on the toast and season with butter, salt and pepper, or pour over it a little cream which has been scalded. This is a favorite way for serving this vegetable.
A straightforward Victorian side dish that depends almost entirely on not overcooking the asparagus. Two details in the original need translating for a modern cook.
- The hinge: cooking time"Till tender" in 1900 often meant fifteen or twenty minutes in an open pot, which leaves asparagus grey and collapsing. Medium spears need 3 to 5 minutes in salted boiling water, thick ones 6 to 7; they should still have some spring when lifted out.
- "Only the tender green"The instruction refers to snapping or trimming off the pale, fibrous butt of each stalk. Bend a spear until it breaks and use that point as your guide for the rest of the bunch.
- Equal lengthsThis is not fussiness. Uniform spears cook at the same rate and sit flat on the toast, which matters when the toast is doing the work of a plate.
- Scalded creamScalding means heating to just below a simmer, when small bubbles ring the pan — around 180F. Pour it over hot, well-drained asparagus so it does not cool the dish.
- The toastThe toast hem them dry and firm. Anything thin or soft will go to pulp under wet asparagus; buttering the toast first helps.
- DrainingLift the spears out and let them drain a moment on a cloth. Water carried onto the toast is the usual failure of this dish.
- YieldReckon a pound of asparagus and two slices of toast for two people as a side, or one generous slice each as a light lunch dish.
Asparagus on toast was one of the standard American and British ways of serving the vegetable through the nineteenth century, the toast serving as an edible sop for butter or cream that would otherwise pool on the plate. The insistence on the tender green portion reflects a period when asparagus was a genuinely seasonal luxury, cut in spring from established beds that took two or three years to come into bearing, and when much of what reached market still carried a long woody base. The dish belongs to the same family of "on toast" preparations that fill turn-of-the-century vegetable chapters, a habit of the era that made a modest quantity of something costly stretch to a full course.