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Asparagus Soup with Green Peas

A vegetable soup made with asparagus, green peas, ham, and assorted root vegetables, finished with mint and bread crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and ham match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 100 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Blanch the asparagus pieces in boiling water until tender.

  2. Add the blanched asparagus to the good stock and strain the mixture.

Make the vegetable base

  1. In a stewpan, combine the carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and cabbage with butter and ham.

  2. Cover and stew briefly.

  3. Add enough stock to cover the vegetables and boil until soft.

  4. Add mint leaves and the crust of a roll.

  5. Pound the mixture.

Add the peas and finish

  1. Boil a quart of green peas.

  2. Strain the boiled peas.

  3. Pound the strained peas.

  4. Mix the pounded peas with the vegetable mixture and pass through a sieve.

  5. Heat the soup and season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  6. Garnish with young boiled peas before serving.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Asparagus + hamtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Asparagus + peastop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together807 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Green asparagus
Provides the main flavour and bright green colour of the soup.
Green peas
Thicken the soup when pounded and add body and sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the stewed vegetables.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften during stewing.
Crust of a roll
Helps thicken the soup, giving it a smoother body.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the vegetable base.

The step that matters

Pound and sieve the peas and vegetables. Pounding breaks down cell walls so the soup becomes smooth and thick; passing it through a sieve removes fibres and any remaining lumps, giving a fine texture.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, bread, carrot, turnip, celery, cabbage, lettuce):

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Beetrootbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, bread, carrot, turnip, celery, cabbage, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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