This article is taken from the June 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £25.
“What about ‘despair’, ‘disparage’ and ‘disparate’?” my colleague asked, as his annoyance began to show. “I suppose you’re going to connect those with ‘asparagus’.”
The argument had started with a game of “Isidore” — in which one player proposes an etymological connexion between superficially similar words, as St Isidore did in his vain and extravagant efforts to preserve the classics against barbarism in the 7th century Visigothic kingdom.
Other players vie to suggest a plausible link. My suggestion was that “asparagus” must share the same root as “dispersal” and “aspersion”.
It seems obvious to me. Related or comparable words in Latin and Greek refer to scattering seeds or to the way roasted fat sprays and spurts from the spit. So many words with the stem “sper” or “spar” or “spr” evoke spreading, as in dispersal, or casting; as in aspersion, or sprinkling, as in the spiritually cleansing Asperges with which Mass always used to begin.
Asparagus — asperges in French — is a natural spraying tool. The woody handle terminates in brush-like, clinging tufts that hold drops of liquid until shaken, for splashing over a congregation, or, when raised to the lips, for splattering across the palate.
I can imagine asparagus stalks doing duty in the rite of Asperges, when a priest with a well-stocked fridge has lost his little aspergillum.
Alternatively, he might like to eat them, especially in early summer, when they are fresh and abundant. If asparagus is white and thick — qualities under-appreciated by English eaters — it is too good to use as a garnish.
The white variety is reliably sweet and needs only blanching or brief exposure to a griddle or grill, with a few grains of coarse salt and enough olive oil to seep between the buds, or perhaps a very finely chopped tomato, warmed in olive oil to provide contrasting colour.
Pickling suits white asparagus, in oil or brine, for use in winter: it makes the spears almost mushily soft, to complement chewy shrimps and crisp crusts. In England, however, the white kind is rare and expensive; the best plan is to devour it without delay.
Even rarer are purple varieties, but their precious colour vanishes pitiably with exposure to heat. Young shoots can be chopped and sprinkled vividly over cold dishes. Later in the season they can be toothsome and — with care — abidingly colourful if gripped in tongs and blanched for a few seconds in boiling water before instant drenching under a cold tap.
It is tempting to steep hyssop in dressings for asparagus
They can only be fully appreciated if unaccompanied, unless perhaps by a little warm cream or butter, olive oil or very light hollandaise.
For the secret of excellence with rare asparagus is simplicity. Purple spears are too exquisite for elaboration. Dousing with thick blobs of mayonnaise is a mistake: the brush-like qualities of the bulbs work best with thin but slightly viscous liquids that cling like drops of hyssop in the psalm. Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo et mundabor!
It is tempting to steep hyssop in dressings for asparagus, but the slightly minty flavour does not work — except when green asparagus garnishes roast or grilled lamb. Green varieties are inferior: prized in Spain only when foraged wild. In England, however, they are the only kind most people eat. They are amenable to steaming, blanching, grilling or roasting; and the strong flavour, sometimes marred by a touch of acridity, makes them adaptable in support of some meat, fish and grains.
They do little or nothing, I think, for beef, pork, game or most white fish, but they add flavour and colour if slashed into a slab of salmon, like stripes in a Garrick tie; or if chopped roughly to speckle rice or polenta like shiny polka-dots. They are easy and excellent as purée, which can be served as soup, or spread as lining in salmon en croûte.
Partnerships with salmon work, I guess, because pinguidity interacts with acridity: that perhaps also explains why green asparagus is such a satisfying vegetable to accompany lamb, the fat of which is less aromatic and perhaps less digestible than that of beef or pork.
On the other hand, chicken, however lean, benefits from the strong flavour green spears add. They are good party food, in puff pastry with ricotta, or rolled in parma ham or well-buttered slivers of brown bread.
When they are treated like white and purple varieties as standalone indulgences, butter or hollandaise enhances the luxury, as does crème fraîche with a pinch of sweetening cinnamon and enlivening paprika.
