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Asparagus
Wash, scrape and let stand in cold water. Tie several stalks together and cook standing with bloom end up. It is more tender and takes less time to cook. Serve on toast with cream sauce poured over it. Canned asparagus needs only heating and is served in same way. Asparagus tips are pretty in bread cups with cheese sauce. Garnish with crisp parsley.
A method note rather than a measured recipe: Mrs. Wilson assumes you know how to make a white sauce and want to know how to keep the tips from turning to mush. The upright cooking is the whole point.
- Cook it standing upTied bundles stood tip-up in a deep pan let the tough stem ends sit in boiling water while the tender tips steam above it. A tall asparagus pot is traditional; the bottom of a stockpot or the insert of a pasta pot works as well, with the tips clear of the water and a lid on.
- TimingThe original gives none. Medium spears need 4 to 6 minutes from the moment the water returns to a boil, thick ones 7 to 8. Pull them while the stems still have resistance at the base; they carry on softening as they drain.
- Scrape or peel"Scrape" means removing the fibrous skin of the lower stalk with a knife or peeler, a step called for more often in older cookery writing than now. Slim modern spears rarely need it; snap or trim the woody end instead.
- The cold-water soakStanding cut stalks in cold water freshens spears that have travelled; half an hour is plenty. The recipe does not say how long, and it is the stem ends rather than the tips that want to sit in the water.
- Cream sauceA plain white sauce: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk or half milk and half asparagus cooking water, cooked until it just coats a spoon, seasoned with salt and a little white pepper. Made thicker than that it smothers the vegetable.
- Canned asparagusHeat it in its own liquid and drain, do not boil it; it is already fully cooked and falls apart. Modern frozen spears behave more like fresh and want a couple of minutes in boiling water.
- Bread cupsCut crustless bread into thick squares or use stale rolls, hollow out a well, brush inside and out with melted butter and crisp at 400F for about 10 minutes. Fill with hot tips and cheese sauce at the last minute or the bases soften.
- QuantityAllow about 1/2 lb of untrimmed asparagus per person as a vegetable course, a generous pound for two if it is the centre of a light supper on toast.
Asparagus on toast with cream sauce was a standard American treatment for a vegetable that arrived in a short, expensive spring season, and the toast is doing real work: it soaks up the sauce and the cooking liquid and stretches an armful of spears into a lunch or a supper dish. Mrs. Wilson wrote for Philadelphia newspaper readers in the years around the First World War, when home canning was ordinary and canned asparagus was readily available, which is why she pauses to say it needs only heating. The upright bundle method she describes is old and practical rather than fussy, and tall tapered asparagus kettles were sold for exactly that purpose. Bread cups belong to the same era's taste for serving small quantities of something choice in an edible container, alongside patty shells and toast points.