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Asparagus Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled asparagus, stock, butter, flour, cream, and spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Asparagus and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 274 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cut the tops off the asparagus, about ½ inch long.

  2. Boil the remaining asparagus.

  3. Cut off all the tender portions and rub them through a sieve, adding a little salt.

Make the soup

  1. Warm 3 pints of stock and add a roux made of a small piece of butter and 1 heaping teaspoon of flour.

  2. Stir in the asparagus pulp and boil slowly for 15 minutes, stirring in 2 or 3 tablespoons of cream.

  3. Color the soup with 1 teaspoon of spinach green.

  4. Just before serving, add the boiled asparagus tops.

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. Asparagus + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + spinachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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 flavor and, once pureed, the body of the soup.
Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the stock.
Butter
Enriches the roux and adds richness to the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the soup.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Boil the stock with the asparagus pulp slowly. Boiling gently for the full 15 minutes lets the thickened pulp cook through and blend smoothly. Adding cream while the soup is hot, not at a hard boil, helps keep it from curdling or separating.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, asparagus, cream, butter, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, asparagus, cream, butter, flour. 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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