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Asparagus, French Method of Cooking
Wash and boil the asparagus about twenty minutes; then drain them, and cut off the heads and about two inches of the tender part of the stalks; mince them small, and mix with them an onion also chopped small. Add the well-beaten yolk of an egg, salt and pepper. Make it hot, put a slice of toast upon it, and pour a good sauce over all, or sippets of toasted bread may be placed under it. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. per hundred, when fully in season. Allow half a hundred for six persons.
A Victorian way of using asparagus stalks as well as tips, closer to a hot ragout than a plate of spears. Two things need adjusting: the boiling time and the handling of the egg yolk.
- Twenty minutes is far too longModern asparagus is done in 4-6 minutes in boiling salted water. Twenty minutes gives grey, collapsing stalks with no flavour left in them.
- Sold by the hundredAsparagus was priced by the count, not by weight. Half a hundred spears for six people is roughly 2.5-3 lb of medium asparagus before the woody ends are discarded.
- The egg yolk will scrambleOnce the yolk goes in, the pan must be kept below a simmer and stirred constantly, or off the heat entirely with the residual warmth doing the work. "Make it hot" means warm through, not cook.
- Cook the onion firstRaw chopped onion stirred into hot asparagus stays raw and sharp. Sweat it in a little butter until soft and colourless before combining, or use a shallot or the white of a spring onion instead.
- "A good sauce"Left unspecified. A plain white or bechamel sauce, or a cream sauce finished with butter, would suit; a hollandaise also works and echoes the French claim in the title.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toasted or fried bread, used as a border or base. Here they are offered as an alternative arrangement, placed under the mixture, in place of the slice of toast laid on top.
- Probable cost2s. 6d. per hundred was a substantial price for a vegetable, and the book notes it as the rate "when fully in season", i.e. at the point when asparagus was at its cheapest and most plentiful.
- YieldAs written, six servings as a savoury course or light supper dish rather than a side.
Cassell's habit of labelling a method "French" is often taken to signal a dish built on a made sauce rather than plain boiled-and-buttered English treatment, and this one seems to follow the pattern: the asparagus is chopped, bound with yolk and sauced. The approach also reflects the economics of the period, when asparagus was expensive and sold by count, so the tender inch or two below the head was too valuable to throw away with the woody butt. Serving the whole thing on or over toast was a common enough treatment for Victorian savoury and supper dishes, where fried or toasted bread did the work that rice, pasta or pastry might do now.