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Cream of Asparagus

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cream of Asparagus

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 ↓

Cream of Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cut off half-inch tips from the asparagus stalks.

  2. Cook the stalks in boiling water until tender.

  3. Rub the cooked stalks through a colander.

  4. Season the puree with salt.

Make the soup

  1. Add the boiling milk to the asparagus puree.

  2. Smooth the butter and flour together.

  3. Stir the mixture into the soup.

  4. Cook for 15 minutes.

  5. Remove the soup from heat.

  6. Stir in the cream.

Serve

  1. Boil the asparagus tips until tender.

  2. Drain the tips and place them in a tureen.

  3. Pour the soup over the asparagus tips.

  4. Serve with 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 + 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 stalks
Provides the main flavour and, once puréed, the body of the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness that softens the vegetal taste.
Butter and flour
Together form a roux that thickens the soup and gives it a smooth texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the soup. Flour clumps if added raw to hot liquid. Smoothing it with butter first and stirring it in evenly lets the starch disperse and thicken the soup without lumps.

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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