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Asparagus Soup

A soup made from asparagus, butter, flour, egg yolks, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Asparagus Soup

Why it works: Asparagus and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 566 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the asparagus and boil it in salted water or beef soup until tender.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until combined.

  2. Gradually add the asparagus cooking liquid to the butter and flour mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a tureen.

  2. Slowly add 8 to 10 tablespoons of the soup to the egg yolks while continuously stirring to prevent the yolks from hardening.

  3. Pour the remaining soup into the tureen and garnish with chopped parsley before serving.

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. Asparagus + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together566 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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 the body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth base.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup when gently heated, adding silkiness.

The step that matters

Adding the soup to the egg yolks. Hot liquid added too quickly scrambles the egg yolks. Adding it slowly while stirring constantly warms the yolks gradually so they thicken the soup smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (asparagus, butter, flour, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against asparagus, butter, flour, egg. 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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