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Stewed Asparagus
Wash the asparagus well in cold water, cut into pieces about an inch long, rejecting all the tougher parts. Put it in a kettle, cover with boiling water, boil twenty minutes, add a teaspoonful of salt, and boil ten minutes longer; then drain in a colander, turn it carefully into a saucepan, add a half pint of cream, a tablespoonful of butter, and salt and pepper to taste; let it boil up once and serve.
A plain creamed asparagus from the era when green vegetables were boiled into submission. The method is sound; the timing is not.
- The timing is the whole problemThirty minutes of boiling reduces asparagus to grey threads. Inch-length pieces need 3-5 minutes in salted boiling water, or 2 minutes for thin spears, and should still have some spring when drained.
- Salt the water firstThe original adds salt two-thirds of the way through. Salt the water before the asparagus goes in so the pieces season as they cook.
- Half a pint of creamOne cup. Heavy or whipping cream gives the body the recipe assumes; modern light cream or half-and-half will stay thin and may break when boiled.
- KettleHere it means a wide cooking pot, not a tea kettle. Any pan that lets the pieces sit in a shallow layer works better than a deep one.
- "Let it boil up once"Bring the cream just to a boil so it thickens very slightly around the vegetable, then take it off. Held at a boil, a cup of cream reduces fast and turns greasy.
- Rejecting the tougher partsSnap each spear where it breaks cleanly rather than measuring; the woody butts are worth keeping for stock even though this recipe discards them.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity of asparagus; a cup of cream will coat roughly two pounds, serving four to six as a side dish.
Asparagus in a cream sauce was common in American table cookery through the second half of the nineteenth century. The long boil reflected genuine period practice rather than carelessness: vegetables were widely believed to need thorough cooking to be digestible.