Asparagus
There is no cooked vegetable which raises expectation and lures the fancy so much as the asparagus. We are attracted to it, as to the chief salad-plants, by something more than the craving for food. -it is a charm. When we know that it is a lily, near of kin to the lilyof-the-valley, we are not surprised at its power over us. When we hear that it is ranked with the asphodels, we are ready to believe that the fields of asphodel in which the blessed roam in Elysium must be beds of asparagus. It is Asparagus gratifying to know that this truly Elysian lily-though it does not look like a lily when it comes to table is a native of England. Of kindred plants, besides the lily-ofthe-valley, there are also in England Solomon's seal and butcher's broom. Both of these have young shoots which may be eaten like asparagus; and the latter is a great curiosity, having a flower which grows out of the leaf. All these plants have a certain narcotic and soothing influence, which is due to a peculiar principle named by the chemists, after their wont, asparagin. It is a pretty name, but it does not tell us much. We have banished asparagus from the British pharmacopeia, but the French still hold to itchiefly, however, making use of the root. It is supposed to still and soothe the action of the heart, like foxglove; it is also supposed to act as a lithic in preventing gravel; and it is known to have a marked and very rapid action on the kidneys. Whatever may be its medical virtues, we in England know them only through the charm of the vegetable when it comes to the table. And certainly nowhere is it cultivated to such an extent as in the neighbourhood of London. It grows wild near the seaside. At Kynance Cove, in Cornwall, there is an island called Asparagus Island, because of its abundance there. Loudon, who ought to know, declares that nowhere, unless in Holland, is the plant brought to such perfection as in England; and he adds without any exception whatever -that the asparagus beds of Mortlake and Deptford are the most extensive in the world.
The greatest defect of the English arrangement of dinner is that almost always vegetables are of no account save as adjuncts. It is not understood, except in the dinners of the poor, that a vegetable may make an excellent dish to be eaten by itself alone. To this rule, however, there are two exceptions made-in favour of artichokes and asparagus. It is a question whether this exception is due to a pure admiration of the vegetable, or to the circumstance that, Asparagus having to be eaten with the fingers, it is necessary to put down either knife or fork in order to seize the vegetable. The probability is, that if the Creator had thought fit, in His wisdom, to endow the Englishman with three or four hands, he would never be seen eating the artichoke or the asparagus alone, but always in conjunction with some other food.
Asparagus in Stalks. After washing and trimming the stalks, tie them in a bundle, or bundles, of about a score in each, and cut the white ends even. Put them in hot water with a small handful of salt, and boil them for twenty minutes. Drain them then on a napkin, and serve them on toasted bread which has been dipped in the water they have boiled in. Send them to table with English butter sauce, for which there is a special direction. Some, however, prefer to eat them with oil and vinegar. In this case they are, as the French say, to be refreshed with cold water.
Fontenelle was passionately fond of asparagus, but he liked them with oil. His friend, the Cardinal Dubois, liked them not less fervently, but he preferred them with a butter sauce. Fontenelle had a great bundle of asparagus sent to him; he told the Cardinal of it, invited him to dinner, and promised faithfully that half should be served with oil and half with sauce. The Cardinal accepted; but just upon the dinner-hour came a message to his host that he had fallen in a fit, and was dead, or dying. Fontenelle rushed towards the kitchen: "All with oil! all with oil!" he cried, fearing that the cook would not send up enough of his favourite sauce to eat with all; and then, having paid this honour to the asparagus, he returned to his dining-room to lament over his friend. So great is the influence which asparagus, with oil, has been known to exert over the human soul.
Asparagus Peas. - These are the points of young green Aspic asparagus cut into peas, and served, like peas, along with fricandeaux, sweetbreads, or cutlets. They are also served separately, as an entremet, and are then prepared exactly as peas in the French fashion.
Asparagus Soup. - Cut all that is tender from a bundle of asparagus, and boil it with some salt in about half a gallon of water. Spinach may be added for colour, and parsley and spring onions for flavour. When boiled enough, strain off the liquor and keep it in reserve-at the same time separating the asparagus from the other vegetables, and braying it in a mortar. Then take about two ounces of flour, the same quantity of butter, and a spoonful of white sugar. Pass this for five or six minutes over the fire, to make a white roux. Mix the pounded asparagus with it, add a little of the liquor, let it boil for a few minutes, and pass it through a tammy, or a fine strainer, back into the pan which contains the chief portion of liquor. Finally, mix two yolks of eggs with half a tumbler of cream, a little melted butter, and a pinch of grated nutmeg. Stir this into the hot soup, and it is then ready to be served, with some fried crusts apart.
There is no broth in the foregoing, and it is not needed. But those who wish it can use chicken broth in place of the water.
Asparagus with Eggs. - One of the most distinguished of omelets is made by cooking asparagus in the usual way, cutting the ends into peas, and mixing them with pepper and salt in the omelet. In the same way they are excellent mingled with scrambled eggs (œufs brouillés).
The essay runs long, but three workable recipes sit inside it: boiled stalks, asparagus soup, and asparagus with eggs. Only the timings and a few pieces of kit need translating.
- Twenty minutes is the one thing to ignoreBundled stalks boiled twenty minutes will be grey and collapsing. Thick spears need 4-6 minutes in well-salted boiling water, thin ones 2-3, and they should still resist slightly at the base. The bundle-and-tie method is still sound if the stalks are of even thickness.
- Why the stalks were tiedTying holds the spears together and lets them be lifted out whole, and it suits stalks with tougher white bases, which the instruction to "cut the white ends even" implies. The recipe does not say to stand the bundle upright. Modern all-green spears are tender throughout, so snapping or peeling the woody ends off is usually enough.
- The toast under the stalksBread dipped in the cooking water and laid under the spears is there to catch the butter and the drips. It works, but the toast must be sturdy and only briefly dipped or it turns to paste on the plate.
- English butter sauceThe cross-reference is to the flour-thickened melted butter sauce standard in English cookery of the period, not hollandaise; its proportions are not given on this page. Hollandaise or plain melted butter with lemon serves the same purpose.
- Soup quantities and kitHalf an imperial gallon is four pints, roughly 2.3 litres. "Braying in a mortar" means pounding to a paste — a blender or food processor does it in seconds. A tammy is a fine cloth sieve; a chinois or a fine mesh strainer pressed with a ladle is the equivalent. The recipe does not say how large a bundle it assumes.
- The roux is unusualTwo ounces each of flour and butter plus a spoonful of sugar, cooked five or six minutes without colouring, gives a thick white roux. The sugar is period taste and can be halved or dropped; it flattens the grassy edge of the asparagus rather than sweetening the soup.
- The egg and cream liaisonTwo yolks with half a tumbler (about 1/2 cup) of cream must go in off the boil. Temper by whisking a ladle of hot soup into the yolks first, then return the lot to the pan and hold it below a simmer. Once it boils the yolks curdle and no amount of straining recovers the texture.
- Asparagus peasNot a legume — tips cut into pea-sized rounds. Cut the top 2-3 inches into short lengths, blanch 1-2 minutes, and finish in butter. They are worth making from the tender upper stalk left over from a soup batch.
- The medical claimsAsparagine is an amino acid, not a narcotic, and asparagus has no action on the heart comparable to foxglove. Read that passage as pharmacy history. The rapid effect on the kidneys the author mentions is real enough as a diuretic tendency.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was written anonymously by the journalist and critic E. S. Dallas, and named for Auguste Kettner, the Soho restaurateur whose establishment gave the book its authority; entries like this one are arranged alphabetically as a dictionary of dishes, which is why an essay on lilies and Elysium sits on top of three recipes. The horticultural boasting is of its moment: the market gardens of Mortlake and Deptford supplied the capital with asparagus by the cartload, and Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Gardening — the source Dallas leans on, an older authority whose praise of those beds dates from decades before 1877 — did indeed rate English beds against Dutch. The Fontenelle anecdote is a chestnut of French table literature, told about the writer Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle and variously about the Abbé Terrasson or Cardinal Dubois depending on who is telling it, and it should be taken as traditional rather than documented. What dates the page most sharply is the complaint that English dinners treat vegetables as adjuncts: asparagus and artichokes were the two things a respectable English diner was permitted to eat alone, with the fingers, and Dallas cannot resist noting that this is as much a matter of hands as of admiration.