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Cream of Asparagus Soup

A soup made with boiled asparagus, water, milk, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and 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 the asparagus in water until tender.

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

Make the milk base

  1. Heat the milk in a separate pot.

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter and flour until smooth, then stir into the heated milk.

  3. Bring the milk mixture to a boil, then pour it into the asparagus.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the toasted bread into dice and add it to the soup before serving.

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
Forms the main body and flavor of the soup once cooked until tender.
Milk
Provides the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the soup becomes smooth and creamy rather than watery.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the hot milk. Flour clumps if added without first being blended smooth with the butter, and stirring it into hot milk helps it disperse evenly so the thickening is smooth.

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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