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Asparagus Soup, Clear

A clear soup made from asparagus peas and stock, sweetened with sugar, optionally finished with a liaison of eggs and béchamel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and peas match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 808 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup, Clear

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the asparagus peas in the stock until tender.

  2. Add 3 pints of good stock and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in a small lump of sugar.

Finish the soup

  1. Make a liaison of 4 eggs and 1 pint of béchamel.

  2. Add the liaison to the soup.

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.

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. Asparagus + peastop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Peas + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Asparagus + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus peas
Provide the main vegetable body and flavour of the soup.
Eggs
Thicken the soup and give it a smooth, rich body when added as a liaison.
Béchamel
Adds body and creaminess to the liaison, helping it blend smoothly into the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the liaison. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the soup boils after the liaison goes in, the eggs can scramble and curdle. Add it off the heat or at very low heat, stirring constantly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, sugar, egg):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, sugar, egg. 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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