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Asparagus Soup

A soup made from boiled asparagus, milk, butter, flour, and salt, served over toasted bread.

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 soup base

  1. Boil the asparagus in water until tender.

  2. Rub the asparagus through a colander.

  3. Return the asparagus to the cooking water.

Make the thickened milk

  1. Heat the milk in a separate pot.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the butter and flour.

  3. Stir the mixture into the heated milk and cook for a few moments.

  4. Season the mixture.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the asparagus.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil.

  3. Serve over the toasted 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
Forms the main body and flavor of the soup once puréed through a colander.
Milk
Provides creaminess and a smooth, rich texture in the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps form the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup by forming a roux with the butter when stirred into the milk.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter-flour mixture into the heated milk. Adding the roux to hot milk while stirring keeps it smooth; if added lumpy or to cold milk, flour clumps form and the soup can be grainy. Cooking it a few moments removes the raw flour taste and fully thickens the milk.

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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