Asparagus are the vegetable obtained from one species within the genus Asparagus, specifically the young shoots of Asparagus officinalis. It has been used from very early times as a culinary vegetable, owing to its delicate flavour and diuretic properties. There is a recipe for cooking asparagus in the oldest surviving book of recipes, Apicius's 3rd century CE De re coquinaria, Book III. White asparagus is cultivated by denying the plants light while they are being grown.

The name asparagus comes from classical Latin, but the plant was once known in English as sperage from medieval Latin sparagus. The original Latin name has now supplanted the English word. Asparagus was also corrupted in some places to sparrow grass; indeed, John Walker stated in 1791 that Sparrow-grass is so general that asparagus has an air of stiffness and pedantry.

In their simplest form, the shoots are boiled or steamed until tender and served with a light sauce like hollandaise or melted butter or a drizzle of olive oil with a dusting of Parmesan cheese. A refinement is to tie the shoots into sheaves and stand them so that the lower part of the stalks are boiled, while the more tender heads are steamed. Tall cylindrical asparagus cooking pots have liners with handles and perforated bases to make this process foolproof.