Home › Meat Substitutes › Asparagus in Cream
Asparagus in Cream
Untie the asparagus, wash, remove the scales, and cut into half-inch pieces. Cook in sufficient boiling water — salted — to almost cover for ten to twelve minutes. Drain off the liquid, and pour over the asparagus some hot milk and cream in the proportion of one-third cream and two-thirds milk; also add butter for seasoning. One quart of asparagus will require one-third cup cream, two-thirds cup milk, two tablespoons butter and one-half teaspoon salt; or a white sauce may be used.
A straightforward creamed vegetable from the era when asparagus arrived tied in bundles and cream came in a single grade. A few notes on quantities and timing.
- "Untie the asparagus"Asparagus was sold field-tied in bundles, which is why the recipe begins by undoing string. Modern bunches are banded; the instruction just means separate the spears before washing.
- Removing the scalesThe triangular bracts along the stalk trap grit and were routinely scraped off with a knife. With thin modern spears this is unnecessary — snap off the woody base and rinse well instead.
- Ten to twelve minutes is longThat timing suits thick, mature stalks. Half-inch pieces of ordinary supermarket asparagus are done in three to five minutes in boiling salted water, and will turn olive-drab and limp if held to twelve.
- "One quart of asparagus"A quart measure of cut half-inch pieces is roughly a pound of trimmed spears. The dairy quantities the recipe gives are keyed to that quart measure.
- The cream"Cream" in a recipe of this period generally means something closer to what we would now call light cream than to modern heavy cream. Heavy cream will work but gives a richer sauce than intended.
- Heat the dairy separatelyThe milk and cream are poured over hot, not cooked with the asparagus. Warm them gently in another pan — boiling milk on drained asparagus will thin out and taste scalded.
- Or the white sauce optionThe alternative is a white sauce; a medium one made with 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour and 1 cup milk clings better than the plain cream and is the more forgiving choice if the dish must wait.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a quart of asparagus with this quantity of sauce will serve about four as a side dish.
Meatless Cookery belongs to a run of American cookbooks published around the First World War, when wheatless and meatless days were promoted as a civilian contribution to the food supply, and when vegetarian eating also had a following among health reformers. Placing creamed asparagus under "Meat Substitutes" says less about the vegetable than about the structure of the meal it was replacing: a hot, sauced dish at the center of the plate, with dairy carrying the richness that meat otherwise supplied. Asparagus was a seasonal luxury then, cut in spring and sold in field-tied bundles, and creaming it — like creaming onions, celery or chicken — was a common American way of dressing a vegetable for the center of the table rather than the edge of it.