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Green Asparagus Soup

A savory soup made with veal, salt pork, asparagus, spinach, onion, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 274 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Green Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut the veal, pork, onion, and tough parts of the asparagus into small pieces.

  2. Place them in a pot with the water.

  3. Boil gently for four hours.

Add the spinach and season

  1. Cook the spinach in a little water until tender.

  2. Chop the spinach and strain it back into the cooking water.

  3. Add the sugar to the green liquid.

  4. Strain the soup.

  5. Season with pepper and salt.

  6. Boil once before skimming.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the green heads of asparagus (kept in cold water).

  2. Boil slowly for twenty minutes.

  3. Stir in the butter rolled in flour.

  4. Boil for one minute.

  5. Simmer for an additional five minutes.

  6. Serve, ladling from the bottom.

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. Asparagus + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Spinach + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Asparagus + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,212 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Long simmering draws gelatin and body into the stock, giving a rich mouthfeel.
Streaked salt pork
Renders fat and savory flavor into the stock as it simmers.
Asparagus
Provides the main vegetable flavor and the soup's green character.
Spinach leaves
Adds deeper green color and a mild, earthy flavor to the soup.
Butter
Enriches the soup with fat and a smoother, rounder texture when thickened with flour.
Sugar
Adds gentle sweetness that balances the vegetable flavors.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for twenty minutes after adding the asparagus heads. Prolonged heat breaks down the chlorophyll that makes asparagus bright green, so the soup turns dull olive. Keeping the heads in cold water beforehand and timing the boil carefully helps preserve the color and tender texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, asparagus, spinach, pepper, butter, sugar):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, asparagus, spinach, pepper, butter, sugar. 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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