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Asparagus with Cheese
2 cups cooked aspara-½ cup grated cheese gus, cut in half- 4 tablespoonfuls meltinch pieces ed butter 1 1/2 cup soft bread- ½ cup milk crumbs Salt, pepper Moisten the bread-crumbs with the melted butter. Arrange in a baking-dish alternate layers of IO2 0
A plain gratin of the sort that turned yesterday's boiled asparagus into a supper dish. The quantities are straightforward once the two ingredient columns are read separately.
- The ingredient listRead down, not across: 2 cups cooked asparagus cut in half-inch pieces, 1 cup soft bread-crumbs, salt and pepper, 1/2 cup grated cheese, 4 tablespoons melted butter, 1 cup milk.
- Soft bread-crumbsThese are crumbs torn or grated from the interior of a day-old loaf, not dried or toasted crumbs from a canister. Dry commercial crumbs will absorb the butter and milk and turn pasty; a few pulses of stale bread in a food processor gives the right open texture.
- The cheeseA period recipe calling simply for grated cheese would most often have meant a firm, sharp cheddar or an American factory cheese of that type, though the recipe does not specify. Anything that melts cleanly will do; avoid pre-shredded blends carrying anti-caking starch, which can go grainy in a milk-based gratin.
- AssemblyThe printed directions break off at 'alternate layers of', so only the buttered crumbs and the alternating layers are actually stated. To finish it sensibly: layer asparagus, cheese and crumbs alternately, season the vegetable layers, pour the milk over, and end with a crumb layer so the top browns. Keep the crumb layers thin or they drink all the liquid.
- OvenThe recipe as printed gives no oven instruction at all; the text breaks off before it. A moderate oven, around 350F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the milk is set around the edges and the top is browned, suits the dish. The asparagus is already cooked, so you are only heating through and browning.
- Do not cook the asparagus furtherThis is the hinge of the dish. Left-over asparagus that has already been boiled will collapse to threads if given a long bake; pull it as soon as the top colours.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; two cups of asparagus will serve about three or four as a side dish, or two as a light main course with bread.
Cookbooks devoted to left-overs were a recognisable genre in the United States in the decades around 1900, when household economy was framed as a moral and scientific duty as much as a financial one. Asparagus was expensive and briefly seasonal, and a similar formula of vegetable, milk, grated cheese and buttered crumbs turns up in such books applied to cauliflower, celery, cabbage and macaroni. The dish belongs to the English and American style of gratin, in which crumbs rather than a flour sauce often carry the body, and the same shape of dish is recognisable in the casseroles of the mid-twentieth century.