Asparagus, Boiled
INGREDIENTS.-To each 1/2 gallon of water allow 1 heaped tablespoonful of salt, asparagus.
AVERAGE COST, in full season, for 100 heads, 2s. 6d.
Asparagus should be dressed as soon as possible after it is cut, although it may be kept for a day or two by putting the stalks into cold water; yet to be good, like every other vegetable, it cannot be cooked too fresh. Scrape the white part of the stems, beginning from the head, and throw them into cold water; then tie them into bundles of about 20 each, keeping the heads all one way, and cut the stalks evenly that they may all be the same length; put them into boiling water, with salt in the above proportion; keep them boiling quickly until tender, with the saucepan uncovered. When the asparagus is done, dish it upon toast, which should be dipped in the water it was cooked in, and leave the white ends outward each way, with the points meeting in the middle.
Serve with a tureen of oiled butter.
ASPARAGUS.
ASPARAGUS PUDDING.
TIME.-15 to 18 minutes after the water boils.
SEASONABLE. May be had forced from January, but cheapest in May, June and July.
A Victorian method for a vegetable that was, then as now, treated as a luxury. The technique is sound apart from the timing, which belongs to an era of thick, woody, field-grown stems.
- The timing is the thingFifteen to eighteen minutes will reduce modern asparagus to grey mush. Thin spears need 2-3 minutes in boiling water, thick ones 4-6, until a knife slides into the base with slight resistance.
- Salt proportionOne heaped tablespoon per gallon is very roughly 1 oz to 4.5 litres - a light hand by modern standards for green vegetables. Salting more heavily seasons the spears as they cook.
- "Oiled butter"Simply butter melted gently until liquid and poured into a small jug or sauceboat, not clarified and not browned.
- ScrapingWorth doing only on thick spears with tough white bases: peel the lower third with a swivel peeler, working from just below the tip downwards. Pencil-thin asparagus needs nothing but the woody end snapped off.
- Uncovered panDeliberate. Keeping the lid off lets acids escape and helps the spears hold their colour; covered, they turn olive.
- The toastDipping bread in the cooking water was a way of catching the butter and juices. A round of plain toast, briefly moistened, still works; use the water while it is hot or the toast goes leathery.
- QuantityA bundle of about 20 heads serves two to three as a first course. The book's costing of 100 heads reflects a trade that sold asparagus by the hundred.
- SeasonThe book's May-to-July window is close to the modern outdoor British season, which runs from roughly late April to late June; the "forced from January" crop is now simply imported year-round, and cheapest and best in late spring.
Asparagus was one of the few vegetables Victorian cookery writers treated with real reverence, and the trouble taken here - even lengths, heads all one way, points meeting in the middle of the dish - shows it. The bundling and the specially shaped tall asparagus kettle were meant to keep the delicate tips out of the fiercest boil while the tougher bases cooked; the toast beneath is the older English service, predating the fashion for eating spears from the fingers with melted butter. The price given, 2s 6d for a hundred heads in full season, marks it as a dish for a household with money: out of season, forced asparagus cost several times that, which is why the book is careful to say when it is cheapest.