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Asparagus Soup

A hearty soup of bacon, beef, ale, and greens with asparagus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Lettuce and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a stewpan, cook the bacon until fat is rendered.

  2. Add the beef and stir until the gravy is drawn.

  3. Pour in the water and ale, then let it stew gently for an hour.

  4. Skim off the fat and strain the liquid.

Add the greens and serve

  1. Add the white beet leaves, spinach, cabbage lettuce, mint, sorrel, and powdered marjoram to the liquid.

  2. Boil these ingredients until tender.

  3. Add the asparagus tops and boil until they are tender.

  4. Serve hot with a French roll in the middle.

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. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Spinach + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Spinach + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + sorreltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Releases gravy and flavour into the liquid as it stews, giving the soup its body.
Bacon
Renders fat that carries savoury flavour into the stewpan at the start.
Spinach
Adds leafy body and a green, vegetal flavour as it softens in the broth.
Asparagus tops
Contributes green flavour and tender texture when boiled in the soup.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, acidic note that brightens the savoury broth.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, pepper, spinach, cabbage, lettuce, sorrel):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, spinach, cabbage, lettuce, sorrel. 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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