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Asparagus Soup

A creamy soup made with boiled asparagus, milk, butter, flour, and sea salt, served with toasted bread bits.

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

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the asparagus base

  1. Boil the asparagus in water until tender.

  2. Rub the cooked asparagus through a colander.

Make the milk thickening

  1. In a separate pot, heat the milk.

  2. Warm and mix the butter with the flour.

  3. Gradually add the hot milk.

  4. Season the mixture.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the asparagus.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Serve in a tureen with toasted bits of bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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

Asparagus
Provides the main flavour and body of the soup once cooked and pureed through a colander.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and hot milk, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Cooks with the flour to form a roux, adding richness and helping the flour thicken smoothly.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that, thickened with the roux, gives the soup its body and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk gradually. Adding hot milk to the butter and flour slowly, while mixing, keeps the starch dispersed so the thickening stays smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, bread. 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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