Skip to main content
Main

Soup Op Asparagus

A vegetable soup made with asparagus, carrots, celery, turnip, leek, parsley, onion, tomatoes, butter, flour, eggs, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Soup Op Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel the asparagus and boil until tender.

  2. In another pot, boil the carrots, celery, turnip, leek, parsley, onion, and tomatoes until soft.

  3. Mash the vegetables and strain them.

  4. Add the strained asparagus water, butter, and salt to the vegetable mixture.

  5. Boil with fine-cut noodles.

Make the egg dumplings

  1. Beat the eggs separately.

  2. Mix the beaten eggs with flour, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Drop the mixture into the boiling soup.

  4. Let it boil for 5 to 7 minutes.

Serve the asparagus

  1. Cut the asparagus in half lengthwise, using only the tender parts, and prepare as a vegetable dish.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Asparagus + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 colour of the soup.
Eggs
Bind the flour mixture and set when boiled, giving the dumplings structure.
Flour
Thickens the egg mixture so it holds its shape in the hot soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the vegetable base.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the vegetable base.

The step that matters

Dropping the egg mixture into the boiling soup. Eggs and flour set quickly in hot liquid. If the soup is not kept at a steady boil when the mixture goes in, the dumplings can clump or turn heavy, so add it gradually and keep the soup boiling.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, carrot, celery, turnip, leek, parsley, onion):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, carrot, celery, turnip, leek, parsley, onion. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes