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Wilberforce Soup

A creamy asparagus soup made with milk, butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Wilberforce Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Wash and scrape the asparagus.

  2. Place it in a pan with boiling water, salt, and pepper.

  3. Simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the stalks, set aside the tips, and cut the stalks into 1-inch pieces.

  5. Return the pieces to the pan and cook until very tender, uncovered.

  6. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a double boiler, scald the milk.

  2. Mix the butter and flour to a paste, then stir into the milk until thick and smooth.

  3. Add the asparagus pulp and adjust seasoning if needed.

  4. Stir in the asparagus tips and simmer for 5 minutes.

  5. Stir in the cream 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.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

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

  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
Provides the main flavour and, once puréed through a sieve, the body of the soup.
Milk
Forms the base liquid of the soup and carries the creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and combines with flour to form the thickening roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, velvety body when cooked with the butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier mouthfeel at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the milk. Adding the flour paste to hot milk without first blending it smooth can leave lumps. Cooking the flour briefly lets its starch swell and thicken the milk evenly.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, milk, butter, flour, 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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