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Asparagus Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled asparagus, milk, cornstarch, butter, and Karo syrup, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cook the asparagus in boiling salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the asparagus and cut the tips into a tureen to keep hot.

  3. Mash the remaining stalks through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan until boiling, then add the asparagus cooking liquid.

  2. In a bowl, mix the cornstarch and butter into a smooth paste.

  3. Gradually add part of the soup stock to the paste, cooking gently until creamy.

  4. Combine the creamy mixture with the asparagus pulp, season with salt, pepper, and Karo Syrup, and stir until boiling.

  5. Strain the soup into the tureen with the hot asparagus tips.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted strips of bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Asparagus + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

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

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 pulp that gives the soup body.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and adds richness.
Cornstarch
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and mixes with cornstarch to form a smooth paste.
Karo syrup
Adds a small amount of sweetness that balances the savory asparagus.

The step that matters

Mixing the cornstarch and butter into a smooth paste before adding liquid. Cornstarch clumps if it hits hot liquid dry or unevenly. Blending it first with fat and adding liquid gradually lets the starch disperse and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, pepper, syrup, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, pepper, syrup, bread. 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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