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Cream of Chicken with Asparagus

A creamy soup made with chicken broth, milk, asparagus, butter, flour, and finished with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream of Chicken with Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cook the asparagus tips in their liquor with 1 pint of water for 5 minutes, then drain and cut the tips into 1-inch lengths.

  2. Return the asparagus to the liquor and cook for 20 minutes, then strain through a sieve.

  3. Dissolve ½ teaspoon of baking soda in hot water and add it to the strained liquid.

Make the soup

  1. Add 2 quarts of chicken broth and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in 2 quarts of boiling milk.

  3. Thicken the mixture with 4 tablespoons of butter and 8 tablespoons of flour.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then add whipped cream before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Asparagus + chickentop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  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 tips
Provide the main flavour and the tender pieces that give the soup its body.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the liquid, which helps keep the asparagus colour bright.
Chicken broth
Supplies the savoury base flavour of the soup.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the soup base.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and combines with flour to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling in the hot liquid as it cooks with butter.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk. Adding cold or scalding-hot milk too quickly to a hot liquid can curdle it or cause lumps. Stir steadily and keep the liquid at a steady heat so the milk blends smoothly.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, butter, flour, pepper, cream. 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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