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Asparagus Soup

A soup made with beef or veal broth, onions, turnips, sweet herbs, asparagus, poached eggs, roasted fowl, and tarragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Asparagus and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 138 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine the broth, onions, turnips, sweet herbs, and asparagus in a pot.

  2. Simmer until tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve to strain it.

  4. Season the strained soup to taste.

  5. Add the boiled tops of asparagus to the strained soup.

Prepare the garnish

  1. Poach the eggs until hard.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil the clear gravy soup in another pot.

  2. Add the roasted fowl to the boiling gravy soup for 1–2 minutes.

  3. Add tarragon leaves to the soup.

  4. Season the soup with salt.

  5. Place the poached eggs and boiled asparagus heads in a tureen.

  6. Pour the hot soup over them.

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. Asparagus + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together138 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + asparagustop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Gives the soup its main flavour and, as puréed stalks, its body.
Beef or veal broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Eggs
Poached and hard-cooked, they add protein and substance as a garnish.
Onions
Build savoury aroma and sweetness as they cook down into the base.
Turnips
Add earthy sweetness and thicken the soup slightly when strained.
Clear gravy soup
Adds a rich, savoury meat flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Straining the simmered vegetables and asparagus removes fibres and lumps, so the soup becomes smooth and evenly textured rather than gritty.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, asparagus, egg, tarragon. 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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