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Asparagus Soup

A creamy soup made with asparagus, stock, onion, herbs, flour, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove the tips from the asparagus and set them aside.

  2. In a pot, combine the asparagus stalks with 3 pints of stock or water.

  3. Fry the chopped onion in a separate pan until soft.

  4. Add the bay leaf, parsley, celery, thyme, and peppercorns to the pot with the asparagus.

  5. Simmer the mixture for 35 minutes.

  6. Strain the soup through a sieve, pressing the asparagus through to extract flavor.

Finish the soup

  1. Cook the asparagus tips in a cup of stock or water for 20 minutes, then strain and add to the soup.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the flour and butter to form a paste, then add it to the soup.

  3. Cook the soup slowly for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

  4. Stir in the rich cream and the warmed asparagus tips just 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Asparagus + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together378 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Gives the soup its main flavor and body when the stalks are simmered and pressed through the sieve.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a smoother, heavier texture.
Butter
Combined with the flour to form a paste, adding richness and helping the thickening blend smoothly.
Rich cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the finished soup a silky, mellow texture.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter paste. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, so mixing it with butter first and stirring while the soup cooks lets it disperse and thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, parsley, celery, thyme, flour, butter, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, parsley, celery, thyme, flour, butter, 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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