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Asparagus Soup

A soup made with boiled asparagus, milk, butter, flour, and salt, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Asparagus Soup

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the asparagus in water until tender.

  2. Rub the asparagus through a colander.

  3. Return the asparagus to the cooking water.

  4. Heat the milk and stir in the butter and flour mixture.

  5. Cook the mixture for a few moments.

  6. Season the mixture to taste.

  7. Pour the mixture into the asparagus and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen over croutons.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 body of the soup once rubbed through a colander.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the soup base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping carry flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter and milk.

The step that matters

Cook the butter and flour mixture before adding it to the asparagus. Cooking the mixture for a few moments in the hot milk lets the flour starch swell and thicken smoothly. Adding it raw can leave a pasty, lumpy texture or a raw floury taste.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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