Asparagus, Stewed
INGREDIENTS.-100 heads of asparagus, 1/4 lb. of bread-crumbs, 3 oz. of butter, 2 eggs, a little mace, salt. AVERAGE COST, 3s.
Scrape the asparagus and cut each head twice across into equal parts, lay the heads aside and boil the other parts till half done.
ASPARAGUS.
Put the butter into a stew-pan with the seasoning and the asparagus, heads as well as stems, and simmer gently for 1 1/2 hour.
Shortly before serving add the bread ASPIC JELLY. crumbs and the yolks of the eggs. Serve with the sauce poured over the asparagus.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE from May to August.
Aspic Jelly, Moulded with Vegetables. INGREDIENTS for quart mould.-1 pint of aspic jelly, any cold boiled vegetables, such as asparagus tops, green peas, carrots, turnips, or beetroot in dice, cucumber (about 1 pint in all), 2 hardboiled eggs. AVERAGE COST, 1s. Coat a wetted mould with the melted jelly, and when cold arrange in it some of the vegetables, with due regard to colour and when cool some more vegetables, with and contrast; then add some more jelly AUBERGINES, BAKED.
A Victorian treatment that turns asparagus into something closer to a thick ragout than a plate of spears. The ingredient list and the method disagree on the amount of butter, so work from the method.
- The hinge: the hourSimmering asparagus for a full hour reduces it to a soft, almost jam-like mass — which is what the recipe intends, since the crumbs and yolks are stirred in at the end to bind it. If you want asparagus with any bite, this is not the dish; cook the cut stems 4-5 minutes and the tips 2 minutes, and expect a different result from Mrs Beeton's.
- 100 headsVictorian asparagus was commonly reckoned and sold by the hundred heads, as here. Depending on thickness, 100 heads might come to roughly 3 to 4 lb.
- "Scrape"Older asparagus had tougher skin and was scraped from below the tip downward with a knife. A vegetable peeler on the lower two-thirds does the same job; snap off the woody base first.
- ButterThe stray line at the top gives 1 oz., the ingredient list 3 oz. Three ounces (about 6 tablespoons) suits the quantity of asparagus and the crumb-and-yolk finish.
- Bread-crumbsA quarter pound is about 2 cups of fresh soft crumbs, not dried packaged crumbs. They act as the thickener here; dried crumbs will drink the liquid and go pasty.
- Egg yolksAdd the yolks off the direct heat and stir constantly. Above about 180F they scramble and the sauce breaks into curds rather than thickening.
- MaceGround mace is the aril, the outer coat of the nutmeg seed — milder and more floral. A pinch is enough; nutmeg can stand in, used sparingly.
- Cost and seasonThree shillings was a substantial sum for a vegetable dish, reflecting asparagus as a short-season luxury. The May-to-August window is English outdoor asparagus; imported spears are now year-round but at their best in spring.
Asparagus was grown in English gardens by the sixteenth century and by the nineteenth was a market-garden crop raised in quantity around London, sold in bundles and graded by thickness, the thinnest known as "sprue". Cooking it at length with butter, crumbs and egg yolks belongs to an older tradition in which vegetables were stewed to tenderness and enriched into a dish in their own right, rather than blanched and served plain with melted butter — the treatment that has since won out. Beeton's book often gives more than one treatment of the same vegetable side by side.