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Asparagus Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with asparagus tips, stock, flour, milk, and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and flour work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 936 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Asparagus Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine soup stock and asparagus tips in a pot.

  2. Simmer for two hours.

  3. Strain the mixture and return the liquid to the pot.

  4. Whisk in the flour to thicken the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Add a pinch of baking soda and the hot milk for each serving.

  2. Serve with a tablespoon of whipped cream in each bowl.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 flavor and body of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid so the soup becomes creamy.
Hot milk
Adds richness and mellows the soup into a smooth cream.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and a cool, silky finish at serving.

The step that matters

Whisking in the flour. Flour must be whisked into hot liquid so its starch disperses evenly; added in lumps or to cold liquid it forms clumps that stay in the soup and make it grainy.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, 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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