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Asparagus Soup

A creamy soup made with boiled asparagus, butter, flour, stock, and 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

Cook the asparagus

  1. Wash the asparagus and boil the stalks in salted water until tender.

  2. Transfer the asparagus to cold water for a moment.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and add 2 heaping tablespoons of flour.

  2. Stir in 3 cups of soup stock and 3 cups of cream or milk, then add the asparagus.

  3. Season with salt to taste and stir until it boils.

  4. Strain the soup, return it to the heat, add 1 tablespoon of butter, and serve.

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 flavor and body of the soup once cooked and strained.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the roux and the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter to form a roux.
Cream or milk
Adds creaminess and smooth texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Add the flour to the melted butter and stir in the stock. Flour must be cooked briefly in the butter to form a roux; if the liquid is added too quickly or unevenly, lumps form and the soup may 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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