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Asparagus, Bearnaise Sauce
Open a can of fine asparagus, and carefully lay them in a sautoire with their liquor; add a half pint water and a teaspoon salt, set on the fire, and as soon as it comes to a boil lift up the asparagus with a skimmer and lay on a napkin over a hot dish and send to the table with a freshly prepared Bearnaise, separately.
A serving method more than a recipe: the asparagus is canned and already cooked, so the only real work is warming it without destroying it and having the Béarnaise ready at the same moment.
- The hingeCanned asparagus is fully cooked in the can. It goes into the pan only to come up to temperature — lift it out the instant the liquid moves, as written, and no later. Another minute and the spears collapse into threads.
- SautoireA sautoire is a shallow straight-sided pan, chosen here because the spears can lie flat and full-length. Any wide skillet or sauté pan works; avoid a deep pot where you would have to stand them up or bend them.
- SaltCanned asparagus liquor is already salted, often heavily. Taste it before adding the teaspoon of salt called for, and in most cases leave the salt out entirely.
- The napkinDraining on a folded linen napkin laid over a heated platter was standard hotel practice for boiled asparagus and it still works: the cloth wicks water that would otherwise thin the sauce on the plate. Use a plain cloth napkin, not paper.
- Béarnaise, since none is givenThe book assumes you know it: a reduction of white wine vinegar, shallot and tarragon, strained, then egg yolks whisked over gentle heat with warm butter beaten in. It must be made last and held barely warm — above roughly 160F it curdles, and it will not survive reheating.
- If using fresh asparagusBoil trimmed spears in salted water 3-5 minutes depending on thickness, until a knife enters the stem with slight resistance, then drain on the napkin exactly as described. The recipe's structure is unchanged.
- YieldThe recipe gives no can size; a can of spears will stretch to two servings, or three as a first course. Allow up to a cup of Béarnaise for four.
Canned asparagus was a point of pride, not a compromise, when this book was written: asparagus was among the vegetables put up commercially early on, and imported French and California tins meant a restaurant could put asparagus with Béarnaise on the menu in February. That explains a recipe that begins "open a can" and then insists on a freshly made sauce — the labor was expected to go where it showed. The napkin-over-a-hot-dish service and the sauce sent separately in its own boat are both marks of the grand-hotel style these international cook books were transcribing for domestic use. Béarnaise itself is generally traced to the Pavillon Henri IV at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the 1830s, the name nodding to Henri IV of Béarn, though the attribution is traditional rather than firmly documented.