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Asparagus Cream Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled asparagus, milk, stock, and corn starch, seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Asparagus Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cook the asparagus in boiling salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the asparagus, cut off the tips, and place them in a soup tureen.

  3. Press the pulp from the stalks through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the white stock or cooking water to the milk.

  3. In another saucepan, mix the corn starch and butter over heat, gradually adding some scalded milk to make a smooth mixture.

  4. Once smooth, add the remaining milk and asparagus pulp.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  6. Stir until boiling, then strain into the 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Provides the main flavour and, once pressed, the pulp that thickens and colours the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the soup and adds richness and mild sweetness.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the soup its smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the starch mix smoothly into the milk.

The step that matters

Add the starch mixture gradually to the milk. Cornstarch clumps if it meets hot liquid all at once. Mixing it with butter and adding scalded milk slowly keeps it smooth, and stirring until boiling lets the starch swell and thicken the soup.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

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