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Asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce
Carefully wipe the tips of the asparagus, scrape the stalks, and cut them the same length; wash well, and tie them in small bundles, choosing those of the same size. Cook in boiling water, slightly salted-the biggest should be put in a few moments before the smaller ones. When the tips are tender, drain, and arrange them on a folded napkin, pile the largest on the top. Serve separately in a sauce-boat some Hollandaise sauce, prepared as follows. Take a wineglass of vinegar and a few grains of pepper and boil, then draw away from the fire and add the yolks of six fresh eggs, and stir with an egg-beater. When the eggs begin to thicken drop slowly into the saucepan with the other hand eight ounces of good melted butter, turning the egg-beater all the time to mix well together. If the sauce should become too thick, thin it with a little warm water. Strain through muslin and serve hot. Probable cost, asparagus, 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. per hundred heads; sauce, 1s. 3d.
A plain boiled asparagus with a vinegar-based hollandaise. The sauce is the part that needs attention: it is built off the heat, and the whole thing hinges on the butter going in slowly enough for the yolks to hold it.
- A wineglass of vinegarRoughly 2 fl oz (4 tablespoons) in Victorian usage, though wineglasses varied. Start with 2 tablespoons reduced from that amount if you want a sauce that tastes of butter rather than vinegar.
- Butter-to-yolk ratioSix yolks to 8 oz butter is a loose, saucy hollandaise by modern standards, where 1 large yolk carries 2 oz butter comfortably. Expect something closer to a pourable sauce than the thick mayonnaise-like version served today; you can push it to 12 oz butter with the same yolks.
- Off the heat means barely off"Draw away from the fire" would have left the pan on a range still holding residual warmth. On a modern hob the pan cools fast. Use a bowl over barely simmering water, and take it off if the yolks look like scrambling at the edges.
- Egg safety in an emulsionFor yolks to be reliably safe they need to reach about 160F/71C, which is also close to where they curdle. Work slowly with a thermometer, or use pasteurised eggs, particularly if serving anyone pregnant, elderly or immune-compromised.
- Melted butter, not clarified"Good melted butter" here is whole butter melted and warm. Clarifying it first gives a firmer, less likely to split sauce, since you are not adding the butter's water back into the emulsion.
- Straining through muslinThis catches the peppercorns and any threads of set yolk. A fine sieve does the same job; do it just before serving and keep the sauce warm, not hot, or it will break.
- Cooking the asparagusTied bundles cook in 4-7 minutes in salted boiling water depending on thickness, tested at the base of the stalk. The recipe sets no time, only "when the tips are tender"; printed recipes of the period often allow considerably longer, while modern taste wants the stems still firm.
- The folded napkinA folded cloth was the conventional way to send asparagus to table, and it also absorbs the water that keeps draining from the stalks, so the sauce is not diluted at the table.
- YieldThe sauce as written is generous, enough for eight to ten servings of asparagus. Halve it for four.
Cassell's prices asparagus "per hundred heads" rather than by weight, a reminder that it reached the kitchen cut and bundled by the count and graded by size. The pairing with hollandaise is older than the name; a warm emulsion of egg yolk, butter and an acid was known in English and French kitchens as "Dutch sauce" before sauce hollandaise settled as the standard term in the nineteenth century, and the association with the Netherlands is often traced to Dutch butter rather than to any Dutch recipe. That this version uses vinegar and whole peppercorns rather than lemon juice places it in the older tradition, closer to the reduction that underlies a bearnaise.