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Asparagus, Hollandaise Sauce
Carefully open a quart can fine asparagus. Place in a saucepan with two quarts hot water, not boiling, and a tablespoon salt; warm up for ten minutes; carefully lift with a skimmer, drain thoroughly on a sieve. Then place on a hot dish with a folded napkin and serve with a hot Hollandaise sauce, served in a bowl separately.
A serving method rather than a cooking method: the asparagus is already cooked in the can, so the whole point is to warm it through without breaking the spears.
- The hinge: never let the water boilCanned asparagus is fully cooked and structurally fragile. The recipe specifies only "hot water, not boiling"; water held below a simmer warms the spears through in ten minutes, while a hard boil risks breaking them up.
- A quart canPerhaps a pound or so of drained spears, though the recipe gives no weight. Modern canned asparagus commonly comes in 14-15 oz tins, so two will stand in; drain off the packing liquid before warming.
- Fresh asparagus insteadIf you use fresh, this recipe no longer applies: boil or steam 1 to 1.5 lb of trimmed spears in salted water for 3-5 minutes depending on thickness, then drain and serve the same way.
- The saltA tablespoon in two quarts is lightly salted water. Taste the canning liquid first; some brands are already salty enough that you can cut the added salt in half.
- Draining mattersWater clinging to the spears will thin the hollandaise on the plate. Let them sit on the sieve a full minute, then blot the dish with the napkin under them.
- The folded napkinStandard period service: a cloth napkin folded on a hot platter absorbs residual water and keeps the spears from sliding. A warmed platter lined with a clean linen towel does the same job.
- Hollandaise held hotThe sauce is served separately in a bowl, so it must be kept warm without overheating: too hot and the egg curdles, too cool and it stiffens or separates. A bowl set over warm (not simmering) water is the safest holding method.
Canned asparagus was a mark of an ambitious table rather than a compromise when this book was written. Commercial canning of asparagus grew up around the market gardens of California and northern France in the late nineteenth century, and a quart can of fine white or green spears could be set before guests in January, when fresh stalks were scarce in the northern market and reached only wealthy tables through forcing and hothouse cultivation. That the recipe assumes the can, gives no thought to fresh asparagus, and spends its instructions entirely on gentle reheating and correct presentation suggests what the cook was chiefly being offered: not the vegetable, which was taken for granted, but the service. The folded napkin, the separate sauce bowl and the hot dish are the vocabulary of French restaurant service as it was transplanted into American hotel and household cookery, and hollandaise with asparagus is generally said to have become the settled pairing around the turn of the century.