Recipe from the oldest cookbook in the world
Don’t feel like half-cooked sticks? Cook asparagus “backwards”
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Fed up with asparagus that is only unevenly cooked? Then try this recipe, which was used by the Romans 2000 years ago.
You can cook asparagus, prepare it in the oven or grill it. With all methods, however, you usually have the same effect: the sticks are soft, the tips almost mushy. The two parts of the asparagus therefore have different cooking times. How could this be prevented?
With a rather old method. To be more precise: 2000 year old technology. The ancient Romans already cooked asparagus and (luckily) recorded their recipe. However, the interpretation of the recipe was quite difficult, since culinary items were mostly written in colloquial Latin. An example: in the book “Apicius De Re Coquinaria” the preparation of asparagus goes like this: “rursum in acquam calidam“, which means something like in boiling water (in acquam calidam) prepare.
Cook asparagus “backwards”. 
For decades, however, no one could make sense of what rum or rursus in boiling water means. In 1936, Joseph Dommer Vehling was finally able to translate the word. Rursus could be a short form of the Latin word objection be that means “backwards”. So should you cook asparagus backwards in boiling water?
Vehling finally understood the recipe to mean that the stalks first had to be peeled and washed and then tied into a bundle. Then you put the sticks “backwards”, i.e. with the back or underside in the boiling water. So that the poles are in the water and the tips stick out. The tips are now cooked by the steam and the stalks by the boiling water. The result? Evenly cooked asparagus – and the ancient Romans already knew the method.
If you want even more aroma, you can also put the asparagus spears in a mason jar and fill it up with cream, butter and garlic. The mason jar is then simply placed in a pot of boiling water – in a water bath, so to speak. The effect of the cooking method is the same, only the taste is better.
Asparagus peeler test: Click here for the asparagus peeler comparison.
Peeler test: Click here for the peeler comparison.