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Boiled Asparagus
Cut off lower parts of stalks as far down as they will snap. Wash them, remove scales and tie them in bundles. Cook in boiling salted water for about 15 minutes or until soft, leaving the tips out of water for the first 10 minutes of the cooking. Drain, remove the string, and season with salt, pepper and butter.
Or serve with white sauce.
A sound method with one dated element: the cooking time. Everything else translates directly.
- Cut the time downFifteen minutes gives olive-drab, collapsing spears. Thin spears need 2-3 minutes in boiling water, thick ones 4-5; pull them when a knife slips into the base with slight resistance.
- Snapping versus peelingSnapping wastes less thought but more asparagus, since the break follows the fibre and can travel high. With thick spears, trim the base with a knife and peel the bottom third instead.
- Tips out of the waterThe point of the upright bundle is that stalks need longer than tips. It works, but only if the pot is deep and narrow; in a wide pan the water rolls over the tips anyway. A tall asparagus pot or a stockpot with the bundle stood on end is the intent.
- Tying in bundlesTwo loops of kitchen string, one near the base and one below the tips, so the bundle can be lifted out whole; the recipe has you remove the string after draining.
- Salted waterSeason it properly -- about 1 tablespoon salt per 4 quarts. Salting the cooking water seasons the spears through, and the recipe also seasons with salt after draining.
- White sauceIn a book of this period that means a basic bechamel: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk, cooked until it no longer tastes of raw flour, seasoned with salt and a little nutmeg or lemon if you like.
- YieldReckon 1/2 to 3/4 lb of untrimmed asparagus per person as a side dish; a standard bunch of about 1 lb serves two.
Asparagus was a spring luxury for most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries -- a brief local season, no air freight, and a crop that takes two or three years in the ground before it yields. The upright bundle method that this recipe describes is why tall, narrow asparagus pots were sold as a distinct piece of kitchen equipment, and it reflects a period conviction that vegetables were done when thoroughly soft. The entry covers trimming, tying, boiling and two finishes in five sentences and assumes no prior knowledge of any of them.