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Soup

Cream of Chicken with Asparagus

A creamy soup made with chicken broth, milk, asparagus, butter, flour, and finished with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Chicken with Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cook the asparagus tips in their liquor with 1 pint of water for 5 minutes.

  2. Drain the asparagus.

  3. Cut the tips into 1-inch lengths.

  4. Return the asparagus to the liquor.

  5. Cook for 20 minutes.

  6. Strain through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Dissolve ½ teaspoon of baking soda in hot water.

  2. Add the dissolved baking soda to the strained liquid.

  3. Add 2 quarts of chicken broth.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Stir in 2 quarts of boiling hot milk.

  6. Thicken the mixture with 4 tablespoons of butter and 8 tablespoons of flour.

  7. Season with salt and pepper.

  8. Add whipped cream before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Asparagus + chickentop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 tips
Provide the main vegetable flavor and the tender pieces that give the soup its body.
Chicken broth
Supplies the savory base flavor for the whole soup.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the soup as it is stirred in hot.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and with flour helps form the thickened base.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a smooth, creamy texture when cooked with butter.
Baking soda
Helps the asparagus liquor stay bright in color and softens its flavor.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked evenly with the butter and hot liquid so it swells and thickens smoothly; adding it lumpy or without stirring leaves clumps that do not dissolve.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, butter, flour, pepper, 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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