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Asparagus Soup with Stock

A soup made from fresh asparagus, stock, egg yolks, cream, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,338 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup with Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cut off the heads of the asparagus and boil them separately in salted water for about 15 minutes until done.

  2. Cut the remaining asparagus into small pieces and add them to the boiling stock.

Make the soup

  1. Cook gently for 1 hour.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine colander and return to the pot.

  3. Boil again and add the asparagus heads and the beaten egg yolks mixed with cream.

  4. Serve hot.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Asparagus + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,338 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together838 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 body of the soup once cooked and strained.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness when gently heated with the cream.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, softening the soup's texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is boiling hard when they go in. Keep the soup hot but not boiling, and stir well, so the yolks thicken it smoothly.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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