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Cream Asparagus

A veal knuckle soup with asparagus, butter, flour, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cook the veal knuckles slowly in 3 quarts of water with 1 tablespoon of salt for 2 hours, removing scum as it rises.

  2. Strain the broth.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the asparagus until tender.

  2. In a separate pan, melt the butter until bubbling, then add the flour and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the strained broth to the butter and flour mixture, stirring constantly until smooth.

  4. Add the asparagus and the water it was boiled in to the soup, and heat until boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, gradually pour the hot soup over the well-beaten egg yolks and cream, stirring constantly.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Veal knuckles
Release gelatin and flavour into the water, giving the broth body and savoury depth.
Asparagus
Provides the main flavour and green colour of the soup.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the soup while forming the base of the roux.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the broth.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup, adding smoothness and richness when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the hot soup to the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks can curdle if they get too hot too quickly. Pouring the hot soup in gradually while stirring constantly tempers the yolks, so they thicken the soup smoothly instead of scrambling.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, egg, 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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