No. 2696

Asparagus Tops Fried a la Miranda

Pointes d'Asperges Frites a la Miranda

Bend and break off the tender part of the asparagus into one inch lengths; blanch them well in salted water; drain and dip in fine cracker dust, then in beaten egg, and finally in bread-crumbs; fry, drain, salt, and dress on a folded napkin, laying a bunch of fried green parsley on top. Serve apart a sauce made with one hard-boiled egg-yolk mingled with one raw yolk, mustard, salt and pepper; beat vigorously, stirring in a little olive oil and tarragon vinegar.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer gives quantities for nothing here, which is normal for The Epicurean — it was written for cooks who already knew the drill. The points below fill in the numbers.

The hinge: dry the asparagusBlanched asparagus holds a surprising amount of water, and wet spears will shed their breading in the fat. After draining, spread the pieces on a towel and let them dry until the surface is matte before the cracker dust goes on.
Blanching timeRanhofer gives no time. In practice two to three minutes in well-salted boiling water suits pencil-thin tips, perhaps four for thick ones. They finish cooking in the fryer, and overblanched asparagus collapses inside its crust.
Cracker dustFinely crushed plain soda crackers or unsalted saltines. The first dry coat gives the egg something to grip; skipping it and going straight to egg is the usual reason breading slides off.
FryingDeep fat at 350-375F, in small batches, one to two minutes to a light gold. The frying medium is not specified here; rendered fats such as lard were usual in kitchens of the period, and any neutral oil works.
Fried parsleyMust be bone dry or it will spit violently. Fry sprigs ten to fifteen seconds only — it turns from bright green to olive and bitter almost instantly — and drain on paper.
The sauceThis is a small hand-made mayonnaise built on one cooked and one raw yolk, closer to sauce gribiche than to modern aioli. Add the oil drop by drop at first; the recipe calls only for "a little" olive oil, so keep the sauce small and sharp rather than working it up into a full mayonnaise. Since the yolk is not cooked, use pasteurized eggs if you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised.
Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and worth seeking out — plain white wine vinegar with a bruised tarragon sprig steeped in it for a day is a fair stand-in. The mustard is unspecified; a French, Dijon-style mustard suits the sauce better than a bright yellow prepared mustard.
The folded napkinA period service convention: fried food was dressed on a folded linen napkin on the platter to absorb fat and keep the crust crisp. A cloth napkin still does this better than a paper liner.
YieldTwo pounds of asparagus, trimmed to tips, gives a first course for four. Fry and serve immediately; the coating softens within minutes.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what came out of the Delmonico's kitchens in New York, where he was chef for some three decades, and its asparagus section runs to many numbered variations on the same few inches of vegetable — a sign both of how seriously the restaurant treated garnish cookery and of how expensive forced spring asparagus was in a city that ate it as a luxury. Pointes d'asperges, the tender tops, were the prized part; the woody lower stalks went to soups and purées, and Ranhofer's instruction to bend and break rather than cut is the same test cooks still use. Suffixes like "à la Miranda" were the working currency of nineteenth-century French menu writing; some commemorate a person or place, others simply distinguish one treatment from another, and no Miranda has been identified behind this one. What does place it firmly in its period is the service: fried food heaped on a folded napkin with a bouquet of fried parsley on top, and the sauce sent to table separately in its own boat.