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Cream of Asparagus Soup

A thick soup made from asparagus pulp, milk, stock, thickened with corn starch or flour, butter, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Asparagus and corn share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 84 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream of Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a large kettle, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Melt the butter and mix it thoroughly with the corn starch or flour.

  3. Add the butter mixture to the boiling milk, stirring continuously until it thickens.

Finish and can

  1. Stir in the stock, asparagus pulp, salt, and pepper, and bring to a boil again.

  2. Pour the soup into cans, cap them, tip them, and process.

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. Asparagus + corntop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together84 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Asparagus + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus pulp
Provides the main asparagus flavor and body of the soup.
Whole milk
Forms the creamy base that the thickened mixture is built on.
Corn starch or flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and coats the starch so it blends smoothly into the milk.
Stock
Adds savory depth and liquid to thin the soup to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-starch mixture to the boiling milk. Starch must be stirred constantly as it meets hot liquid, or it clumps before it can disperse and thicken evenly. Starch thickens as it heats and gelatinizes, so a smooth result depends on steady stirring while it thickens.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, milk, corn, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, milk, corn, butter. 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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