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Fresh Asparagus, Swiss
Scrape and clip off the ends of two bunches of fresh asparagus, thoroughly wash and tie them up in three bunches, plunge them in three quarts of boiling water with a tablespoon salt, and boil for fifteen minutes. Remove and drain well.
Mix on a plate one ounce grated Swiss and one ounce grated Parmesan cheese. Lightly butter a baking dish, arrange a third of the asparagus as a layer at the bottom of the dish, sprinkle a third of the cheese over, then another third of the asparagus, a third of the cheese, then the rest of the asparagus and cheese on top. Place an ounce butter in a frying pan with half a very finely chopped white onion, toss until a very light brown, and pour over the asparagus. Set in the over for fifteen minutes. Remove and serve.
A gratin of boiled asparagus layered with cheese and finished with browned onion butter. The one change worth making is the boiling time.
- Boil far lessFifteen minutes in salted water will leave modern asparagus limp and grey; the spears then get another fifteen in the oven. Blanch until barely tender — 2 to 4 minutes for medium spears — and drain hard. Asparagus was often sold thicker-stemmed than much of what is on sale now, which may account for the long boil.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, 350–375F, is right for melting the cheese and heating through; the dish is fully cooked before it goes in.
- "Two bunches"Reckon about 2 lb of asparagus, which serves four as a side. Tying it in bundles was for lifting it out of the pot intact — kitchen twine still does the job, or use a wide skillet and a slotted spatula.
- Cheese quantityOne ounce each of Gruyère-style Swiss and Parmesan is roughly half a cup grated in total, spread over three layers. That is a light dusting rather than a blanketing gratin; double it if you want a browned top.
- ScrapingPeeling the lower stalk was standard when asparagus came thick and fibrous. With slim modern spears, snapping or trimming the woody base is enough.
- The onion butterHalf a white onion, chopped very fine, in an ounce (2 tablespoons) of butter, taken only to light brown. Let it colour past that and the sweetness turns bitter and dominates the dish.
- Draining mattersWater carried in from the pot pools under the layers and dilutes the butter. Drain on a towel, not just in the colander.
Asparagus with grated cheese and browned butter is the plainest kind of Alpine cookery, and the label "Swiss" here points less to a national dish than to the cheese: Gruyère and Emmental were the Swiss cheeses most likely to be found in American cities around 1900, sold simply as "Swiss." A page of this kind recalls The International Cook Book (1906), compiled by Alexander Filippini, a chef long associated with Delmonico's in New York, in which nationalities are attached to individual dish titles in exactly this way — a dish gets a nationality from one characteristic ingredient or treatment. The long boiling time is not carelessness but a reflection of the vegetable of the period: asparagus was a spring luxury, often sold thick and well grown, and cookbooks of the era routinely gave it a long spell in the pot.