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Soup of Asparagus

A vegetable soup made with asparagus, carrots, celery, turnip, leek, parsley, onion, tomatoes, and optional noodles, finished with egg and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Soup of Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Peel the asparagus and boil until tender.

  2. In another pot, boil the carrots, celery, turnip, leek, parsley, onion, and tomatoes until soft.

  3. Mash the vegetables and strain them.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the strained asparagus water, butter, and salt to the vegetable mixture and boil with the noodles.

  2. Cut the asparagus in half lengthwise, using only the short, soft parts for a vegetable dish.

  3. For an alternative, beat the eggs separately, then mix with flour, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Gradually drop the egg mixture into the boiling soup and let it boil for 5 to 7 minutes.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Asparagus + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 its green, vegetal character.
Eggs
Set into soft strands when dropped into the hot soup, adding body and richness.
Flour
Binds the egg mixture so it holds together as it cooks and thickens slightly.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, smoother mouthfeel and richer flavour.

The step that matters

Gradually drop the egg mixture into the boiling soup. Egg proteins set quickly when they meet hot liquid. Adding the mixture slowly, in a thin stream, lets it form separate strands instead of clumping into one mass.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, carrot, celery, turnip, leek, parsley, onion):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, carrot, celery, turnip, leek, parsley, onion. 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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