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Asparagus ( Asparagus officinalis) is a perennial flowering plant species in the genus Asparagus native to Eurasia. Widely cultivated as a vegetable crop, its young shoots are used as a spring vegetable.
In English, A. officinalis is widely known simply as "asparagus", or sometimes "garden asparagus".
Asparagus was folk etymology by folk etymology in some places to "sparrow grass"; indeed, John Walker wrote in 1791 that " Sparrowgrass is so general that asparagus has an air of stiffness and pedantry". The name 'sparrow grass' was still in common use in rural East Anglia, England well into the twentieth century.Ewart Evans, George "Ask the Fellows who Cut the Hay"
A breed of "early-season asparagus" that can be harvested two months earlier than usual was announced by a UK grower in early 2011. This variety does not need to lie dormant and blooms at , rather than the usual .
Purple asparagus differs from its green and white counterparts in having high sugar and low fibre levels. Purple asparagus was originally developed in Italy, near the city of Albenga and commercialized under the variety name 'Violetto d' Albenga'. Purple asparagus can also turn green while being cooked due to its sensitivity to heat.
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The shoots are prepared and served in a number of ways around the world, typically as an appetizer or vegetable side dish. In Asian-style cooking, asparagus is often stir-fried. Cantonese restaurants in the United States often serve asparagus stir-fried with chicken, shrimp, or beef. It may also be quickly grilled over charcoal or hardwood embers, and is also used as an ingredient in some stews and soups.
Asparagus can also be pickled and stored for several years. Some brands label shoots prepared in this way as "marinated".
Stem thickness indicates the age of the plant (and not the age of the stalk), with the thicker stems coming from older plants. Older, thicker stalks can be woody, although peeling the skin at the base removes the tough layer. Peeled asparagus will poach much faster. The bottom portion of asparagus often contains sand and soil, so thorough cleaning is generally advised before cooking.
Male plants tend to produce spears that are smaller and thinner, while female plants tend produce larger and thicker spears. The thickness of stalks is not an indication of their tenderness; they are thick or thin from the moment they sprout from the ground.
Green asparagus is eaten worldwide, and the availability of imports throughout the year has made it less of a delicacy than it once was.Blamey, M. & Grey-Wilson, C. (1989). Flora of Britain and Northern Europe. . In Europe, according to one source, the "asparagus season is a highlight of the foodie calendar"; in the UK this traditionally begins on 23 April and ends on Midsummer Day. Oxford Times: "Time to glory in asparagus again". In Europe the short growing season and high demand leads to a relatively high price for local produce, although asparagus is also imported.
Only seasonally on the menu, asparagus dishes are advertised outside many restaurants, usually from late April to June. For the French style, asparagus is often boiled or steamed and served with Hollandaise sauce, white sauce, melted butter or most recently with olive oil and Parmesan cheese. (2016). 9782346013760, BnF collection ebooks. ISBN 9782346013760 ( Asperge is French for asparagus.) Tall, narrow asparagus cooking pots allow the shoots to be steamed gently, their tips staying out of the water.
In western Himalayan regions, such as Nepal and north-western India, Ornithogalum pyrenaicum, known as "wild asparagus," is harvested as a seasonal vegetable delicacy known as kurilo or jhijhirkani.
During the German Spargelsaison or Spargelzeit ("asparagus season" or "asparagus time"), the asparagus season that traditionally finishes on 24 June, roadside stands and open-air markets sell about half of the country's white asparagus consumption.
A recipe for cooking asparagus is given in one of the oldest surviving collections of recipes (Apicius's 1st century AD De re coquinaria, Book III). In the second century AD, the Greek physician Galen, highly respected within Roman society, mentioned asparagus as a beneficial herb, but as dominance of the Roman empire waned, asparagus' medicinal value drew little attention until al-Nafzawi's The Perfumed Garden. That piece of writing celebrates its purported power that the Indian Ananga Ranga attributes to "special phosphorus elements" that also counteract fatigue.
By 1469, asparagus was cultivated in French monasteries. Asparagus appears to have been little noticed in England until 1538, and in Germany until 1542.
Asparagus was brought to North America by European settlers at least as early as 1655. Adriaen van der Donck, a Dutch immigrant to New Netherland, mentions asparagus in his description of Dutch farming practices in the New World. Asparagus was grown by British immigrants as well; in 1685, one of William Penn's advertisements for Pennsylvania included asparagus in a long list of crops that grew well in the American climate.
The points d'amour ("love tips") were served as a delicacy to Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764).
Asparagus cause a powerful and disagreeable smell in the urine, as everybody knows.
asparagus... affects the urine with a smell (especially if cut when they are white) and therefore have been suspected by some physicians as not friendly to the kidneys; when they are older, and begin to ramify, they lose this quality; but then they are not so agreeable.
- — "An Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments", John Arbuthnot, 1735
A few Stems of Asparagus eaten, shall give our Urine a disagreeable Odour...
- — "Fart Proudly", Benjamin Franklin, c. 1781
Asparagus "...transforms my chamber-pot into a flask of perfume."
Asparagus contains asparagusic acid. When the vegetable is digested, a group of volatile sulfur-containing compounds is produced.
Certain compounds in asparagus are metabolism to yield ammonia and various sulfur-containing degradation products, including various and , which following consumption give urine a characteristic smell. Some of the volatile organic compounds responsible for the smell are:
Subjectively, the first two are the most pungent, while the last two (sulfur-oxidized) give a sweet aroma. A mixture of these compounds form a "reconstituted asparagus urine" odor. This was first investigated in 1891 by Marceli Nencki, who attributed the smell to methanethiol. These compounds originate in the asparagus as asparagusic acid and its derivatives, as these are the only sulfur-containing compounds unique to asparagus. As these are more present in young asparagus, this accords with the observation that the smell is more pronounced after eating young asparagus. The biological mechanism for the production of these compounds is less clear.
The onset of the asparagus urine smell is remarkably rapid while the decline is slower. The smell has been reported to be detectable 15 to 30 minutes after ingestion and subsides with a half-life of approximately four hours. Asparagus has been eaten and cultivated for at least two millennia but the association between odorous urine and asparagus consumption was not observed until the late 17th century when sulfur-rich fertilisers became common in agriculture. Small-scale studies noted that the "asparagus urine" odour was not produced by all individuals and estimates as to the proportion of the population who are excretors (reporting a noticeable asparagus urine odour after eating asparagus) has ranged from about 40% to as high as 79%. When excretors are exposed to urine of people who do not report odour in their urine after asparagus consumption, however, the characteristic asparagus urine odour is usually reported. More recent work has found that a small proportion of individuals do not produce asparagus urine, and amongst those who do, some cannot detect the odour due to a single-nucleotide polymorphism within a cluster of olfactory receptors.
Debate exists about the universality of producing the sulfurous smell, as well as the ability to detect it. Originally, this was thought to be because some people digested asparagus differently from others, so some excreted odorous urine after eating asparagus, and others did not. In the 1980s, three studies from France, China, and Israel published results showing that producing odorous urine from asparagus was a common human characteristic. The Israeli study found that from their 307 subjects, all of those who could smell "asparagus urine" could detect it in the urine of anyone who had eaten asparagus, even if the person who produced it could not detect it. A 2010 study found variations in both production of odorous urine and the ability to detect the odor, but that these were not tightly related. Most people are thought to produce the odorous compounds after eating asparagus, but the differing abilities of various individuals to detect the odor at increasing dilutions suggests a genetically determined specific sensitivity.
In 2010, the company 23andMe published a genome-wide association study on whether participants have "ever noticed a peculiar odor when they pee after eating asparagus". This study pinpointed a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in a cluster of olfactory genes associated with the ability to detect the odor. While this SNP did not explain all of the difference in detection between people, it provides support for the theory that genetic differences occur in olfactory receptors that lead people to be unable to smell these odorous compounds.
Many German cities hold an annual Spargelfest (asparagus festival) celebrating the harvest of white asparagus. Schwetzingen claims to be the "Asparagus Capital of the World".
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