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Asparagus Soup

A soup made from boiled asparagus, onion, butter, and seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Asparagus and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,212 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the asparagus tips and cut pieces in water until tender.

  2. Remove half of the asparagus.

  3. Blend it through a sieve to thicken the soup.

  4. Fry the onion in butter until soft.

  5. Sieve the onion into the soup.

  6. Add the remaining asparagus pieces to the soup.

Season

  1. Season with coarse sea salt.

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 + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,212 recipes

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Main vegetable; the sieved pulp thickens the soup and gives it its body and flavour.
Onion
Softened slowly, it adds gentle sweetness and savoury aroma to the base.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and gives the soup a smooth, rich mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil the asparagus until just tender. Overcooking dulls the bright green colour and turns the asparagus flavour flat and grassy. Stop as soon as the pieces are tender, since they will be blended and cooked further.

Swap the asparagus

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter. 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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