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Cream of Asparagus

A creamy soup made with asparagus, stock, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream of Asparagus

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 the asparagus

  1. Clean the asparagus and cut off the tips.

  2. Boil the tips in salted water until soft.

  3. Boil the stalks in the stock for twenty minutes.

Make the soup

  1. In a stew‑pan, melt the butter and mix in the flour until smooth.

  2. Pour in the hot stock and add the pulped asparagus through a sieve.

  3. Add the milk.

  4. Bring to a boil, skimming as necessary.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Place the tips in a tureen.

  2. Pour in the boiling soup.

  3. Serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the main flavour and, when pulped, the body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour in the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with the butter into a roux.
Stock
Forms the savoury liquid that the asparagus is cooked and pulped in.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the melted butter. If the flour is not stirred smoothly into the butter, it forms lumps that do not dissolve easily. Stirring the roux and then adding hot stock gradually keeps the soup smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, cream, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cream, 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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