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Asparagus Au Gratin
1/2 pint (I cup) asparagus 1 egg yolk tips IO small dinner rolls 1 gill (1/2 cup) white sauce 1 tablespoonful grated cheese 1 egg yolk 1 tablespoonful cream Few drops lemon juice Salt, pepper, paprika, and grated nutmeg to taste Cut the tops from the rolls, scoop the soft part of the crumb, and place them in the oven to get dry and crisp. Boil the asparagus tips in boiling salted water till tender, then drain. Canned asparagus tips may be used, but do not boil them. Heat the sauce in a fireproof dish, add the cheese, seasonings, yolk of egg, cream, and asparagus tips.
Cook for five minutes. Fill up the rolls with this mixture, sprinkle with grated cheese, and dish on a folded napkin in an au gratin dish. 4 cupfuls beans ½ lb. salt pork
A simple asparagus filling bound with egg yolk, served in hollowed dinner rolls. The list is short but the measures are period ones, and the binding step is where it can go wrong.
- The hinge: keep the sauce below a simmerOnce the yolk and cream go into the white sauce, hold it at a bare steam. Five minutes at a boil will scramble the yolk and the filling will turn grainy rather than glossy.
- Gill and half-pintA gill is half a cup, so the sauce quantity is 4 fl oz. The half-pint of asparagus tips is a volume measure, about one cup.
- Drying the roll casesNo temperature is given; the recipe says only to place them in the oven. In a modern oven, around 350F for 8-10 minutes will crisp the hollowed rolls; they need to be dry enough not to go soggy under the filling.
- White sauceThe recipe assumes a plain white sauce made separately. For 4 fl oz, 1 tablespoon each butter and flour with a scant half cup of milk, cooked until it coats a spoon.
- Canned asparagusThe instruction not to boil canned tips still holds -- they are already cooked and will collapse. Drain them well and fold them in at the end, off the heat.
- Fresh tipsTwo to three minutes in salted water is enough for pencil-thin tips, four to five for thicker ones. Drain thoroughly or the water will thin the sauce.
- Grated cheeseThe recipe specifies only 'grated cheese'; a dry, sharp one such as Parmesan or a well-aged Cheddar suits it. One tablespoon in the sauce is modest; a second for the tops is worth it if you want colour under the grill.
- "Au gratin dish" and the napkinHere that means the shallow serving dish, not a baked casserole. Dishing on a folded napkin was a common presentation of the period; it is optional now.
- YieldTen filled rolls serve five as a first course, or two or three as a light supper dish.
Filled bread cases were, on the evidence of the measures, a staple of what appears to be Edwardian and early twentieth-century service, a way to turn a small quantity of an expensive vegetable into a countable number of neat portions. Asparagus was still strongly seasonal and costly, which is why the recipe cheerfully allows canned tips -- tinned asparagus was a genuine convenience of the period. The nutmeg and lemon juice are conventional seasonings for a cheese-and-cream sauce of the era, inherited from French kitchen practice, where a grating of nutmeg in bechamel was routine rather than a flourish.