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Asparagus (Wash clean cut off the white)
Wash clean; cut off the white part except a mere end, put into slightly salted boiling water, boil five minutes, pour off water, add more boiling hot; boil ten to fifteen minutes, then put in a lump of butter, salt and pepper (some stir in a thickening made of one tea spoon flour mixed up with cold water); cut and toast two or three thin slices of bread, spread with butter and put in a. dish, and over them turn asparagus and gravy. The water must be boiled down until just enough for the gravy, which is made as above. Or, cut the asparagus, when boiled, into little bits, leaving out white end, make gravy as above, put the cut asparagus into a hot dish and turn the gravy over it and serve. A simple manner of boiling asparagus is to tie in a bundle, or Erst wrap in cotton cloth and then tie, and set upright in a saucepan containing boiling water enough to reach nearly to the tender tips; boil rapidly till tender; lay a napkin on a hot platter, take out asparagus, drain for a moment, place on napkin, unwrap, and fold over the asparagus the corners of the napkin, and serve in this form, with white sauce in a gravy-boat.
Or, boiled asparagus may be made cold in ice-box, and served with a sauce made of vinegar, pepper, and salt.
Four methods in one entry, all built on a much longer boil than modern asparagus wants. The useful parts are the upright-bundle technique and the toast base; the timings are the thing to overturn.
- The boiling timeFifteen to twenty minutes total will reduce all but the thickest spears to grey mush. Medium spears need three to five minutes in boiling salted water, thick ones six to eight, and they should still have some resistance at the base.
- Why two watersThe recipe gives no reason for draining after five minutes and adding fresh boiling water; whatever the intent, the step pours away flavour that would otherwise end up in the gravy.
- Cutting off the whiteThis refers to the pale woody base, not to white asparagus. Snap or trim where the stalk stops being tender, usually an inch or two up; peeling the lower third of thick spears with a vegetable peeler works better than cutting more away.
- The thickeningOne teaspoon of flour slaked in cold water and stirred into the reduced cooking liquid gives a thin, barely bound sauce. Bring it to a full boil for a minute after adding or it will taste of raw flour.
- "Boiled down until just enough"With the short modern cooking time you will have far more liquid than gravy. Lift the asparagus out, then reduce the liquid hard to about half a cup before adding butter and the thickening.
- The upright bundleTying the spears and standing them in water that reaches just below the tips steams the delicate heads while the stalks boil, which is still the best method for uneven bunches. A tall narrow pan with a lid works; cotton cloth is optional and mainly keeps the bundle from splaying.
- Serving on a napkinA period convention: the folded linen absorbs drips and keeps the spears warm at table. A warmed platter lined with a clean tea towel does the same job.
- The cold versionVinegar, pepper and salt with no oil is a sharp dressing by current standards. Three parts oil to one of vinegar makes it a vinaigrette without changing the intent.
- YieldA standard bunch, roughly a pound as bought, will serve about three to four as a side or two on toast as a light supper dish.
Asparagus on buttered toast, with the cooking liquor thickened into a gravy and poured over, is a dish long familiar in English cookery and common in American cookbooks of the period; the toast catches liquid that would otherwise pool on the plate. The Dixie Cook Book, like many compendia of its era, offers several methods under one heading rather than choosing between them. The long boil may reflect an asparagus supply unlike the present one -- spears were often thicker and were likely to reach the kitchen some time after cutting -- though the recipe itself says nothing of this. The upright-bundle method described at the end is the one that has lasted best, and the tall asparagus pan sold today works on the same principle.