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Ambushed Asparagus
Cut off the tender tops of fifty heads of asparagus; boil and drain them. Have ready as many stale biscuits or rolls as there are persons to be served, from which you have cut a neat top slice and scooped out the inside. Set them in the oven to crisp, laying the tops beside them, that all may dry together. Meanwhile put into a sauce-pan a sugarless custard made as follows: A pint or less of milk, and four well-whipped eggs; boil the milk first, then beat in the eggs; set over the fire and stir till it thickens, when add a table-spoon of butter, and season with salt and pepper. Into this custard put the asparagus, minced fine. Do not let it boil, but remove from the fire as soon as the asparagus is fairly in. Fill the rolls with the mixture, put on the tops, fitting them carefully; set in the oven three minutes, after which arrange on a dish. To be eaten hot.
A savory asparagus custard served in hollowed rolls — essentially a stuffed-roll vol-au-vent. The whole dish hinges on the custard, which will curdle in seconds if it is allowed near a boil.
- The custard is the whole dishBring the milk to a bare simmer, then pour it slowly into the beaten eggs while whisking rather than beating cold eggs straight into hot milk in the pan. Return to low heat and stir constantly until it coats a spoon, around 170-175F; past 180F it scrambles and cannot be brought back.
- Fifty heads of asparagusFifty heads -- A standard bunch runs about a pound and holds a dozen or so spears, so fifty spears is roughly 2 to 3 lb of asparagus as sold today, yielding perhaps 2 cups of tips once trimmed and cooked. Boil 2-3 minutes in salted water, drain well, and press out moisture before mincing, or the custard will thin.
- Biscuits or rolls"Biscuits" here probably means the soft American biscuit or small raised roll rather than a hard cracker, but firm dinner rolls or small crusty bread rolls hold the filling better. Day-old is essential — fresh bread collapses when the warm custard goes in.
- Crisping the shellsThe recipe specifies no heat; a moderate oven of about 350F for 8-10 minutes will dry and firm the hollowed rolls and their lids.
- Off the heat immediatelyThe instruction not to let it boil after the asparagus goes in is not fussiness; the vegetable's water plus a moment too long over the flame is what splits this sort of custard. Fold the asparagus in off the fire entirely if the pan runs hot.
- The final three minutesThree minutes at 350F is only to warm through and set the surface. Longer and the custard weeps into the bread.
- Yield and servingThe recipe fixes the number of rolls by the number of people to be served; a pint of milk and four eggs will fill roughly six to eight. It must be assembled at the last minute and carried straight to the table.
Dishes of this kind — a rich sauce or savory custard served in a hollowed bread case — were a standing feature of nineteenth-century American cookery, descended from the French croustade. The name looks like the book's own joke: the asparagus lies concealed inside the roll with its lid fitted back on, ambushing the diner. The Dixie Cook Book (first published in the 1880s and reissued for decades) belongs to the great wave of compiled regional cookbooks that bulked out plain Southern household cooking with genteel, French-influenced "company" dishes like this one. Asparagus in that period was a brief spring luxury, sold by the bunch rather than the pound, which is why the recipe counts spears rather than weighing them — and why a cook would think it worth dressing in eggs, milk and butter and giving a fanciful name.