Name: Cream of Asparagus Soup
Ingredients: ½ cup White Sauce No. 1; 2 tablespoons strained asparagus; Salt to taste

Why it works: Sauce and asparagus work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 573 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cream of Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

½ cup White Sauce No. 1
2 tablespoons strained asparagus
Salt to taste

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

If using fresh asparagus, wash and cook it in boiling salted water for 30 minutes.
Strain the asparagus through a fine strainer.

Finish and serve

Add the strained asparagus to the white sauce.
Reheat the mixture and serve.

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.

Sauce + asparagustop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together573 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

White sauce: Forms the creamy, smooth base that carries the soup's body and richness.
Asparagus: Supplies the main flavor and a fine, pulpy texture once strained.

“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.