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Asparagus Soup

A soup made from asparagus or celery thickened with corn starch, seasoned with salt and pepper, served with fried toast.

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

Why it works: Corn and asparagus share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 84 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the soup

  1. Boil water in a pot.

  2. Add 3 bunches of asparagus (or celery) and cook until tender.

  3. Stir in 55 spoonfuls of corn starch and cook for 10 more minutes.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve with nicely cut squares of fried toast.

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. Corn + asparagustop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together84 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 flavour and body of the soup.
Corn starch
Thickens the soup as its granules swell when heated in liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in the corn starch and cook for 10 more minutes. Starch granules thicken the soup only when heated in liquid. Stirring as it goes in prevents lumps, and cooking long enough lets the starch fully thicken and loses its raw, chalky taste.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, pepper. 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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