Asparagus in the Oven
Take four bundles of asparagus. Boil them. Cut off the soft tips about an inch long. Add to them a pint of sweet milk. Mix two or three eggs, a teaspoonful of flour (into which a teaspoonful of butter is mixed), salt, pepper, butter, onion juice, parsley. Add all together with a soupçon of grated cheese on top, and put in the oven to bake for fifteen minutes.
Boiled asparagus tips bound in a light egg-and-milk custard and baked under a veil of cheese — essentially an asparagus gratin.
- “Sweet milk” = whole milk“Sweet” here just means fresh whole milk, as opposed to soured milk or buttermilk; a pint is 2 cups.
- Use the tips, save the endsSnap each spear where it breaks naturally; keep the tender inch-long tips for the dish and simmer the woody ends into stock or soup.
- “Soupçon” and “onion juice”A soupçon is a mere hint; onion juice (grate an onion and use the liquid, not the pulp) seasons without stringy bits.
- It is a baked custardEggs and milk set by gentle heat, so bake at a moderate 350°F (175°C) only until just set — 15 minutes may not be enough; give it 20–30, and a water bath guards against curdling.
- The flour-and-butter thickenerRubbing the teaspoon of flour into the butter before adding it (a tiny beurre manié) keeps it from forming lumps in the custard.
Asparagus has been a luxury for well over two thousand years. The Greeks gathered it wild, and the Romans cultivated it with such devotion that Pliny marveled at the prized spears of Ravenna, while the phrase “celerius quam asparagi coquantur” — ‘faster than you can cook asparagus’ — was said to be a favorite of the Emperor Augustus for anything done in a hurry. Louis XIV so craved it that his gardeners raised it under glass to have it out of season. To bake it into a rich custard, as here, is to treat a springtime luxury with fitting ceremony.
From page 46 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
