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Cream of Asparagus Soup

A soup made with asparagus, stock, milk, butter, flour, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream of Asparagus Soup

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 ↓

Cream of Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cook the asparagus in boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Cut off the heads and mash the stalks through a colander.

  3. Save the cooking water and add milk to make 1 quart.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the strained asparagus in a double boiler.

  2. Make a white sauce with the butter, flour, and seasonings.

  3. Add 1 cup of the liquid from the double boiler to the sauce.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes.

  5. Blend the sauce into the milk mixture.

  6. Add the asparagus heads 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.

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

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

  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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + asparagustop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 flavor and the green body of the soup.
Milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and forms the base of the white sauce.
Flour
Thickens the white sauce as its starch swells with heat, giving the soup body.

The step that matters

Blend the sauce into the milk mixture. Flour thickens only when its starch is evenly dispersed and heated. Adding the sauce gradually and stirring well prevents lumps and gives a smooth, uniformly thick soup.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, asparagus, butter, flour. 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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