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Potage Aux Asperges, or Asparagus Soup

A French asparagus soup made with asparagus, cabbage, onions, carrot, peas, parsley, butter, consommé, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Potage Aux Asperges, or Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the asparagus pieces in a basin of clear water.

  2. In boiling water, add the lettuces, green onions, carrot, peas, and salt; boil briefly and skim.

  3. Transfer the vegetables to a sieve to drain.

Make the soup

  1. In a large stewpan, melt the butter and add the drained vegetables; stir until mashed.

  2. Gradually add the consommé while stirring gently.

  3. Once thoroughly mixed, add sugar and a little salt, then rub through a fine sieve.

  4. Add the quart of mixed consommé and beef stock, and let it boil for 1.5 hours.

  5. Before serving, add the blanched asparagus cut into small pieces.

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.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Asparagus + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

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

  3. Asparagus + peastop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Provides the main flavour and the green pieces added at the end for texture.
Butter
Melts with the vegetables to add richness and carry flavour through the soup.
Peas
Add body and sweetness as they are mashed into the soup.
Consommé
Forms the savoury liquid base that the vegetables are mashed into.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the savoury stock and vegetables.

The step that matters

Rubbing the soup through a fine sieve. Mashed vegetables must be pressed through a fine sieve so the soup becomes smooth; skipping or rushing this leaves fibrous pieces and a grainy texture.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, cabbage, lettuce, onion, carrot, parsley, butter):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, cabbage, lettuce, onion, carrot, parsley, 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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