Skip to main content
Main

Asparagus Soup

A soup made from boiled asparagus, onion, butter, flour, milk, and salt.

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

Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the heads from the asparagus and set aside.

  2. Cook the asparagus stalks and sliced onion in 1 quart of boiling water for 20 minutes.

  3. Rinse the mixture through a strainer.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pan, blend together the butter and flour.

  2. Slowly add 1 quart of boiling milk to the butter and flour mixture, stirring constantly.

  3. Season the mixture and combine it with the strained asparagus.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes.

  5. Add the cooked asparagus heads and serve very hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,212 recipes

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

  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. Flour + milktop 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
Provides the main flavour and body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour in the base.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, body-giving base.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that gives the soup its smooth texture.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk to the butter and flour. Adding the hot milk slowly while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed in the fat, so the base thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Asparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesCream of AsparagusCream of Asparagus38 recipesBoiled AsparagusBoiled Asparagus27 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes