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Soup

Cream of Asparagus

A creamy soup made with white stock, canned asparagus, butter, flour, and cream.

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

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream of Asparagus

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring a little more than 1 quart of white stock to a boil with the asparagus for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture, pressing all the substance from the asparagus, and reserve the tips for garnish.

  3. Mix the flour and butter in a separate bowl to create a paste, then add it to the strained stock to thicken.

  4. Stir in the cream just before serving, and season with salt and pepper.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Chicken + asparagustop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together539 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 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

White stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the asparagus flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a body-rich soup when cooked into a paste with butter.
Butter
Combines with flour to form a paste and adds richness.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream just before serving. Cream can split or curdle if boiled for long or added to very hot, acidic liquids. Adding it at the end, off the heat, keeps it smooth and fresh-tasting.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

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