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Asparagus Tops with Cream
Cut off the points or heads of the desired quantity of asparagus, wash and drain them and place in a saucepan with a little warmed butter. Set the pan on the fire, stir in a little bechamel sauce, and when done remove, place on a dish, pour over the sauce, and serve.
A sketch rather than a recipe: Oscar assumes a cook with béchamel already on the stove and a sense of when asparagus is done. The points below fill in what he left out.
- The hinge: stop while they still have biteAsparagus tips cooked in butter and sauce need only 4-6 minutes; thick tips a minute or two more. Past that they slump and turn grey-green, and no amount of cream sauce rescues them.
- "Points or heads"Take the top 2 to 3 inches. The lower stems can be reserved for soup or stock rather than discarded.
- QuantityFigure roughly 1 lb of untrimmed asparagus per two people as a side, which yields about 3/4 to 1 cup of tips each. Two tablespoons butter and about 1/2 cup béchamel serve four.
- BéchamelEqual weights butter and flour cooked to a blond roux, then whisked with hot milk and simmered until it coats a spoon; season with salt, white pepper and a little nutmeg. Oscar's book has its own béchamel entry and expects you to have used it. A thin sauce is wanted here, not a paste.
- Do not let the butter brown"A little warmed butter" means melted and barely foaming. Browned butter over a pale sauce muddies both colour and flavour.
- Wash and drain properlyTips trap grit in the scales. Swish them in a bowl of cold water rather than under a tap, then drain well — water clinging to the tips will thin the béchamel.
- ServingServe immediately on a warmed dish; the sauce skins over fast. A dish of this kind would most likely have appeared as a vegetable course or a side rather than a main.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maitre d'hotel, published his compilation in 1896, and pages like this one suggest how such books were used: as aides-memoire for professionals who already knew the mother sauces. Asparagus in cream sauce is standard French service-work -- bechamel, older than both men, is among the sauces classified by Careme and later reworked by Escoffier -- and the choice of tips only, with the stalks sent elsewhere, is the sort of economy a large hotel kitchen could manage. Asparagus was a seasonal spring vegetable in the 1890s, and a dish of nothing but tips would have read as a luxury.