Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Cream of Asparagus
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Clean the asparagus and cut off the tips.
Boil the asparagus in salted water until soft.
Boil the stock for 20 minutes.
Make the soup
Melt the butter in a stew pan and stir in the flour to make a smooth paste.
Pour in the hot stock while stirring, then add the pulped asparagus.
Add the milk, bring to a boil, and skim off any foam.
Serve
Place the asparagus tips in a tureen and add the heavy cream.
Pour the boiling soup over the tips and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve very hot.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,968 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together936 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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
- Its pulp gives the soup its body and its tips add texture and a fresh vegetable flavour.
- Flour
- Cooked with butter into a roux, it thickens the soup into a smooth, velvety consistency.
- Butter
- Forms the fat base for the roux and adds richness and a rounded flavour.
- White stock
- Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying the asparagus flavour.
- Milk
- Adds creaminess and mildness, softening the vegetable taste and rounding out the soup.
- Heavy cream
- Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup and its tips.
The step that matters
Stirring the stock into the roux. Adding hot stock to the butter and flour paste while stirring keeps the starch dispersed evenly. Adding it too fast or without stirring lets lumps form, which leaves the soup grainy rather than smooth.
Swap the asparagus
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, butter, pepper, cream):
- Potatofits better
- Leekfits about as well
- Spinachfits about as well
- Asparagusthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter, pepper, cream. 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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