Name: Asparagus Soup Cleab
Ingredients: 200 tops of asparagus; good gravy; slices of bread

Why it works: Asparagus and bread work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 363 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup Cleab

Ingredients

200 tops of asparagus
good gravy
slices of bread

Directions

Blanch the asparagus tops.
Boil the blanched asparagus in a good gravy.
Serve with slices of bread that have been lightly toasted.

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.

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 tops: Form the main body of the soup and supply its green, vegetal flavour.
Gravy: Provides the liquid base that the asparagus cooks in and carries its flavour.
Bread: Adds a toasted, crisp contrast to the soft soup when served alongside.

“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.