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Asparagus Soup

A creamy soup made with boiled asparagus, milk, butter, flour, and seasoned with salt and pepper, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the asparagus base

  1. Boil the asparagus in water until tender.

  2. Rub the cooked asparagus through a colander and return it to the cooking water.

Make the milk thickener

  1. Heat the milk in a separate pot.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the butter and flour until smooth, then stir the mixture into the heated milk.

  3. Cook the mixture for a few moments.

Combine and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper.

  2. Pour the milk mixture into the asparagus.

  3. Bring the soup to a boil.

  4. Serve the soup over the toasted bread in a tureen.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Forms the main body and flavor of the soup when pureed and strained.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor in the thickener.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the soup becomes smooth and slightly viscous.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the hot milk. Flour lumps form if it clumps when added to liquid. Mixing it smooth first, then stirring it into the heated milk and cooking briefly lets the starch hydrate evenly and thicken the soup without lumps.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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