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Asparagus Creah Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Asparagus Creah Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cut off the ends of the asparagus for about 2 inches and boil the rest until tender.

  2. Rub the cooked asparagus through a coarse sieve and season the pulp with coarse sea salt.

  3. Meanwhile, boil the asparagus ends for about 15 minutes, then drain them.

Make the soup

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk.

  2. Mix 1 teaspoon of butter with 1 teaspoon of flour and stir into the boiling milk.

  3. Add the asparagus pulp to the milk mixture and boil for about 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Place the drained asparagus ends in a soup tureen.

  5. Add 2 tablespoons of cream to the soup and pour it into the tureen without boiling again.

  6. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Its pulp forms the body and flavour of the soup once rubbed through a sieve.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the asparagus pulp is simmered into.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the soup body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and combines with flour to form a roux.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the cream without boiling again. Cream can curdle or separate when it is boiled, and the flour-thickened milk may lose its smooth texture. Adding the cream off the heat and pouring it into the tureen keeps the soup silky.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

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