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Asparagus Sauce
Parboil one bunch of asparagus, first scraping. When nearly done, drain and cut in small pieces. Stew in a teacup of milk, with pepper and salt. When done pour into drawn butter, and serve.--Mrs. S. T.
A short 19th-century sauce built on drawn butter, meant to be spooned over boiled fish, poached chicken or veal. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes once the asparagus is trimmed.
- Drawn butterThis is the sauce the recipe assumes you already know: butter thickened with a little flour, thinned with hot water or light stock, seasoned, and finished with more butter off the heat. Proportions vary from book to book, but in American usage of this period it is a thin white sauce rather than simply melted butter, and without it there is nothing to pour the asparagus into.
- A teacupIn American books of this period a teacup is smaller than a modern mug, generally reckoned at about 3/4 cup. Use that much milk; it should just cover the cut asparagus in a small pan.
- Scraping the stalksThe recipe's 'first scraping' reflects period practice of scraping the skin from the stalk with a knife before cooking, which suited thicker stems. With modern pencil-thin spears, snap off the dry ends and skip the peeling; peel only the lower third of stalks thicker than your thumb.
- Parboiling timeTwo to four minutes in salted water is enough for thin spears, five to six for thick ones. The recipe has them finish in milk, so pull them while still firm or the second cooking turns them to string.
- Milk and heatKeep the milk at a bare simmer. Milk held at a rolling boil in a thin pan can catch and curdle; a heavy-bottomed saucepan and low heat help prevent it.
- CombiningPour the asparagus and its milk into the finished drawn butter rather than the reverse, and stir gently over low heat just to bring it together. Avoid boiling once the milk has gone in.
- YieldOne bunch of asparagus and a cup of drawn butter make roughly a pint of sauce, enough for four to six plates. Serve at once.
Drawn butter was a workhorse sauce of English and American kitchens through the 1800s, the plain flour-and-butter base onto which cooks grafted whatever was in season: parsley, eggs, capers, lobster, or here asparagus. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housekeepers, is full of such short recipes signed with initials, and they read as notes between cooks who shared a common vocabulary; the instruction to "pour into drawn butter" needs no elaboration. Asparagus was a garden crop with a brief spring season and little in the way of an off-season supply, so a sauce like this belonged largely to the spring months.