No. 2695

Asparagus Tops a la Maintenon

Pointes d'Asperges a la Maintenon

Have all the asparagus of the same size, not too slender; break off the stalks at the beginning of the tender part; strip off the heads, and cut the tender part into inch lengths; put the heads aside to cook separately. Plunge the lengths into boiling salted water placed in an untinned copper pan; boil quickly, keeping them slightly hard, then wipe on a cloth, and put them into a thin sautoir with melted butter; season, heat rapidly while tossing, then remove. The asparagus can now be laid in a little veloute (No. 415) and chicken puree (No. 713). Serve the asparagus in a vegetable dish, surrounded with croutons of bread shaped like a cock's-comb, fried in butter, just when prepared to dish up.

← No. 2694 Asparagus in Small Bunches-Heads Artichokes & Asparagus No. 2696 Asparagus Tops Fried a la Miranda →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have a stocked professional kitchen and a numbered index of sauces at your elbow. Stripped of the cross-references, this is blanched asparagus tossed in butter and set on a creamy chicken sauce.

Skip the untinned copperThe bare copper pan was used because copper ions fix the green in chlorophyll, giving a vivid colour. It also puts dissolved copper into the food, which is why tinned or stainless pans replaced it. Boil in stainless steel and preserve the colour with a large volume of hard-boiling salted water and a fast transfer to ice water.
"Slightly hard"This is the hinge. Asparagus cut into inch lengths needs about 2 to 3 minutes in furiously boiling water, less for thin stalks. It finishes cooking in the butter, so pull it while it still resists the tooth.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, wider than deep. Any wide skillet works; the point is surface area so the pieces glaze in butter rather than steam.
The two saucesVeloute (No. 415) is a white stock thickened with a blond roux; the chicken puree (No. 713) is not reproduced here, but such purees are generally cooked chicken pounded and sieved, then loosened with veloute. A modern equivalent: a light chicken velvet sauce, about a cup, spooned into the dish as a bed. Do not drown the asparagus.
Croutons in cock's-comb shapeSmall pieces of crustless bread, crescent or triangular, with two or three notches cut along one edge, fried in butter to order. Fry them last, as instructed, or they go soft against the sauce.
The reserved headsRanhofer strips the tips off and cooks them separately because they take perhaps half the time of the stem pieces. Blanch them briefly and use them to garnish the top; the previous entry in the book, No. 2694, is built around them.
YieldNo quantity is given. Two pounds of asparagus, trimmed to the tender part, serves four to six as a first course or vegetable side.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, where his tenure ran in two spells from 1862 to 1896, and its structure is a French kitchen's: dishes are numbered and depend on sauces held ready elsewhere in the book. "A la Maintenon" is traditionally said to honour Madame de Maintenon, second wife of Louis XIV, and by the nineteenth century the name was attached loosely to preparations set on or bound with a rich white sauce, often a soubise or a chicken-thickened veloute. The untinned copper pan here is a genuine period technique rather than a quirk: French cooks knew bare copper held the green of vegetables, and the practice was eventually curtailed because copper's toxicity, like its colour-fixing effect, was recognised. Asparagus in this era was a luxury of short season, and that scarcity may help explain the care taken to sort the stalks by size and salvage the tips as a separate dish.