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Cream of Asparagus Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled asparagus, milk, butter, flour, and served over diced toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cream of Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream of Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the asparagus

  1. Boil asparagus in water until tender.

  2. Rinse through a colander and return to the cooking water.

  3. Add salt and pepper.

Thicken and serve

  1. Heat milk and stir in butter mixed with flour; let it boil.

  2. Pour the milk mixture into the asparagus.

  3. Serve soup over diced toasted bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 vegetable flavor and the bulk of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base and gives the soup a mild, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats and boils, giving the soup body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boiling the flour and butter into the milk. The flour must be fully mixed in and the milk brought to a boil so the starch swells and thickens evenly. If it is not, the soup stays thin, or it turns lumpy and tastes raw and floury.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, milk, butter, flour, 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.

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