Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Asparagus Soup

A creamy soup made from simmered asparagus, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cream of Asparagus Soup

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the asparagus

  1. Wash the asparagus and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Put the asparagus in a saucepan with boiling water and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the tips with a fork and press the remaining asparagus through a sieve, saving the cooking water.

Make the soup

  1. Scald the milk in a separate pot.

  2. In a bowl, rub together the butter and flour until smooth.

  3. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the scalded milk until it thickens, sieving if necessary.

  4. Return the mixture to the pot, add the asparagus and cooking water, and heat through.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 flavor and body of the soup once pressed through a sieve.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that gives the soup its smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and combines with the flour to form the thickening paste.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the scalded milk. Adding the flour mixture to hot milk can form lumps if it is not rubbed smooth first. Starch needs to be fully dispersed before it thickens evenly, so sieving helps remove any lumps that form.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

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

Asparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesCream of AsparagusCream of Asparagus38 recipesBoiled AsparagusBoiled Asparagus27 recipes