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Asparagus Soup

A soup made from boiled asparagus, milk, butter, flour, and salt, served with croutons.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the asparagus

  1. Boil the asparagus in water until tender.

  2. Return the cooked asparagus to the cooking water.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the milk in a separate pot.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the butter and flour until smooth, then add to the heated milk.

  3. Cook the mixture for a few minutes, then season with salt.

  4. Heat to boiling point and pour over croutons in a tureen.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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
Forms the main body and flavor of the soup.
Milk
Creates the creamy base of the soup.
Butter and flour
Mixed together to form a roux that thickens the milk.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter and flour into the hot milk. Adding the flour paste to hot milk without first smoothing it can leave lumps. Mixing the butter and flour until smooth before adding it helps the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly when it is cooked.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

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