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Asparagus Soup

A soup made from boiled asparagus, stock, butter, flour, cream, spinach, and seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Asparagus and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 274 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Cut the tops from the asparagus, about half an inch long, and set aside.

  2. Boil the remaining asparagus, then cut off the tender portions and rub through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Warm the soup stock, add the butter and flour, stirring until combined.

  2. Add the asparagus pulp to the stock and boil slowly for 15 minutes.

  3. Stir in the cream and color the soup with the prepared spinach.

  4. Just before serving, add the boiled asparagus tops.

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 + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + spinachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Provides the main flavor and, as pulp, the body of the soup.
Soup stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the asparagus flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when stirred into the warm stock with the butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil the asparagus pulp slowly. Boiling slowly for the full 15 minutes softens the fibers so the pulp blends smoothly and the flavor develops without scorching the starch and dairy added later.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, spinach):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, spinach. 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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