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Asparagus Soup

A creamy soup made from canned asparagus, stock, butter, flour, hot cream, and whipped cream.

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. Open the can of asparagus and rinse thoroughly in cold water.

  2. Drain, cut off the points, and place the stalks in a saucepan with the stock.

  3. Simmer until very tender, then rub through a fine sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Return to the fire, add butter and flour mixed into a paste, and stir constantly until slightly thickened.

  2. Season to taste and simmer for five minutes.

  3. Add hot cream and the asparagus points, then stir in whipped cream and remove from heat.

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

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

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 body of the soup once puréed and sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps carry flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a paste and stirred into the liquid.
Cream
Adds richness, smoothness and a softer, creamy mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that cooks the asparagus and carries the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour paste. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid while stirring constantly; otherwise it clumps into lumps and tastes raw, and the soup will not thicken smoothly.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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