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Asparagus Soup

A creamy soup made from asparagus, veal stock, butter, flour, and cream, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cut the tips from the asparagus, about ½ inch long.

  2. Cook the remaining asparagus in boiling water until tender.

  3. Rub the cooked asparagus through a coarse sieve and season with salt.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the stock until boiling, then add the butter and flour mixed together with the asparagus pulp.

  2. Boil slowly for 15 minutes.

  3. Stir in the cream and pour the soup into a tureen over the cooked asparagus tips.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 the pulp that thickens the soup body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling in the hot stock with the butter.
Veal stock or milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour to the boiling stock. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Mixing it with butter and asparagus pulp first and then stirring it into boiling stock helps it disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, flour, cream, pepper. 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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