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Asparagus Soup

A soup made with asparagus, chicken stock, cream, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Cook the asparagus until tender, then remove the heads and set aside.

  2. Rub the stalks through a sieve and add the pulp to the chicken stock.

  3. Heat the cream in a double boiler.

  4. In a separate pan, cook the butter and flour together, then add the asparagus pulp.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. When ready to serve, add the asparagus tips and the hot cream.

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

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

  2. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

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

  3. Asparagus + chickentop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, 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 flavour and body of the soup, and the tips add texture.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the asparagus flavour.
Thin cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and combined with the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and cooks with the flour to form a thickening base.

The step that matters

Adding the hot cream. Cream can separate or curdle if it boils or is added cold to a hot soup. Heating it gently in a double boiler and adding it hot at the end keeps the soup smooth and avoids a sudden temperature drop.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, butter, flour, pepper. 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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