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Asparagus Soup

A beef and asparagus soup with calf's foot, onions, celery, pepper, cloves, butter, beer, and a toasted French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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. Cut the beef into pieces.

  2. Place the beef, calf's foot, onions, celery, whole pepper, salt, cloves, and butter in a stew pan.

  3. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Add the warm beer and beef stock or water.

  5. Simmer for several hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the mixture and remove the fat.

  2. Twenty minutes before serving, add the small asparagus tops and the 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
Breaks down during long simmering to give the broth its body and savory flavor.
Calf's foot
Adds gelatin, which gives the finished broth a fuller, silkier body.
Asparagus tops
Add fresh, green vegetable flavor and color when cooked briefly at the end.
French roll
Toasted crust adds a toasted, bready flavor and helps thicken the soup.

The step that matters

Removing the fat after straining. Fat that rises during long simmering can make the soup greasy and mute the flavor, so skimming and straining well before adding the asparagus gives a clean, clear broth.

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.

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