Home › Vegetables › Scalloped Asparagus
Scalloped Asparagus
Boil a bunch of asparagus in salted water until tender,--do not use any of the tough part of the stalk; the lower ends need not be thrown away, however, but should be put aside, and on the day following they may be boiled until soft enough to put through the puree sieve, when the pulp will make a cream soup, or can be used for a sauce.
Boil hard 3 eggs, throw them into cold water, and when cool chop them. Have ready 1 cupful of grated Edam cheese. Butter a baking-dish, put in a layer of asparagus, one of the chopped eggs, then one of cheese, filling the dish with the asparagus on top. Have ready 1 pint of drawn butter or milk gravy seasoned with salt and pepper; pour this gradually over the asparagus, so that it will reach all parts of it. Cover the top with fine bread crumbs and sprinkle lightly with the cheese.
Bake until nicely browned. This may be prepared from asparagus left over from the day before.
A straightforward gratin whose only real puzzle is "drawn butter" — the nineteenth-century term for a butter-thickened white sauce, not simply melted butter. Get that right and the rest follows.
- Drawn butter, explainedDrawn butter here means butter thickened with flour rather than plain melted butter; period proportions vary and tend to be butter-rich, worked with flour into about a pint of hot water or milk and cooked until it coats a spoon. "Milk gravy" is the same sauce made entirely with milk, which suits asparagus and cheese.
- A bunch of asparagusA modern bunch is roughly 1 to 1 1/2 lb; period bunches varied and could be larger. Trimmed of the woody ends, a pound or so gives about 12 oz of usable spears, enough for a 1 1/2-quart dish serving four.
- Boil the spears briefly"Until tender" in this period often meant fifteen minutes or more. Three to five minutes in salted water is enough, since the dish bakes afterwards; longer and the spears collapse into strings.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. Use 375F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the sauce bubbles at the edges and the crumb top has browned. Everything in the dish is already cooked, so you are only heating through and colouring the top.
- EdamEdam is still sold, usually as a waxed ball, and grates dryly rather than melting into ropes. If you cannot find it, a young Gouda behaves similarly; cheddar will work but pushes the dish sharper than intended.
- Pour the sauce slowlyThe instruction to add the pint "gradually" is the hinge. Poured in at once it sits on top and runs off; added in stages it works down through the layers, and the dish comes out moist rather than dry underneath and soupy above.
- The saved butt endsThe trimmings do make good soup, though they lose freshness quickly. If you would rather not hold the raw stalks overnight as the recipe directs, simmer and sieve them the same evening and refrigerate the puree.
- Hard-boiled eggsShocking in cold water is done to stop the cooking and loosen the shells; it also keeps the yolks from greying. Chop them coarsely so they stay visible as a layer.