Skip to main content
Main

Asparagus Soup

A beef-based soup with asparagus, onions, celery, and a French roll crust.

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

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a stew pan, combine beef, calf's foot, onions, celery, whole pepper, salt, cloves, and butter.

  2. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Add warm beer and beef stock (or water) and simmer for several hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain the mixture and remove all fat.

  2. Twenty minutes before serving, add small asparagus tops and toasted French roll crust.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

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

  5. Celery + asparagustop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together378 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Gives the broth its meaty flavour and body as it simmers for hours.
Calf's foot
Adds gelatin, which gives the finished broth a richer, silkier body.
Asparagus tops
Provide the fresh, green vegetable flavour and tender texture in the finished soup.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and rounds out the broth.

The step that matters

Removing the fat after straining. Fat that is left in the broth floats on the surface and makes the soup greasy. Skimming and straining it off gives a clean, smooth result.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, celery, pepper, clove, butter, beer):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, celery, pepper, clove, butter, beer. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes