Skip to main content
Main

Asparagus Soup

A soup made from boiled asparagus, thickened with flour and milk, served with toasted bread cubes and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Asparagus and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 566 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the asparagus

  1. Boil the chopped asparagus in 1 quart of water for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour off the water.

  3. Add 2 quarts of fresh water.

  4. Boil for 20 minutes.

  5. Strain the asparagus and mash it through a colander.

  6. Return the mashed asparagus to the water.

Make the thickened milk

  1. Cream the flour with the oil.

  2. Stir the mixture into the heated milk.

  3. Boil for a few minutes.

  4. Add salt to taste.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the asparagus.

  2. Bring everything to a boil.

  3. Pour over the toasted bread cubes.

  4. Garnish with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 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
Provides the main body and flavor when mashed into the soup.
Flour
Its starch thickens the milk as it heats and boils.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the thickened asparagus is combined with.
Oil
Blended with the flour so it mixes into the milk without clumping.

The step that matters

Stir the flour and oil mixture into the heated milk. Flour thickens only once its starch is hot enough to swell, so the milk must be heated and then boiled for a few minutes. Creaming the flour with oil first helps it disperse smoothly and prevents lumps.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, flour, milk, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, flour, milk, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes