Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Asparagus Soup

A soup made from canned asparagus, cream sauce, and water or stock, optionally with onion, topped with whipped cream and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cream of Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Asparagus and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 566 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cream of Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cook the asparagus in water for 10 minutes.

  2. Cut the tiny flowers from the tips of the asparagus. Set the flowers aside.

  3. Press the cooked asparagus through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Add the asparagus puree to the warm cream sauce.

  2. If desired, mix in a little grated onion.

Serve

  1. Add the reserved flowers to each bowl of soup.

  2. Top with a dollop of whipped cream.

  3. Sprinkle with parsley 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.

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. Asparagus + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Asparagus + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,212 recipes

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

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cream + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Cream and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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 flavor and, once pressed through a sieve, the body of the soup.
Cream sauce
Supplies richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the soup.
Water or white stock
Cooks the asparagus and thins the soup to a pourable consistency.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, cream, sauce, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, cream, sauce, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Asparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesCream of AsparagusCream of Asparagus38 recipesBoiled AsparagusBoiled Asparagus27 recipes