Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Cream of Asparagus
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the asparagus
Clean the asparagus and cut off the tips.
Boil the tips in salted water until soft.
Boil the stalks in the stock for 20 minutes.
Make the soup
In a stew-pan, melt the butter and mix in the flour until smooth.
Pour in the stock and pulp the asparagus through a sieve.
Add the milk to the mixture and bring to a boil, skimming as needed.
Finish and serve
Place the tips in a tureen and add the cream.
Pour the boiling soup over the tips, season with salt and pepper, and serve.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,968 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together936 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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, once pulped, the body of the soup.
- Stock
- Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and rounded flavour, and forms the base for the roux.
- Flour
- Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter into a smooth roux.
- Milk
- Adds creaminess and a softer, mellow body to the soup.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a silky texture when stirred into the tips.
The step that matters
Mixing the flour into the melted butter. Stirring the flour into the melted butter until smooth cooks it into a roux, which thickens the soup evenly. Adding the flour lumpy or too quickly lets clumps form that do not dissolve later.
Swap the asparagus
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, cream, pepper):
- Potatofits better
- Leekfits about as well
- Spinachfits about as well
- Asparagusthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cream, pepper. 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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