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White Mushroom Soup

A creamy soup made with stock, milk, cream, white mushrooms, butter, flour, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

White Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the stock and milk separately.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour together until bubbling.

  3. Pour in half the milk while stirring continuously.

  4. Add the remaining milk and then the stock.

Finish the soup

  1. Cook until thick and smooth, then stir in the mushrooms and salt.

  2. Finally, add the cream and squeeze in lemon juice 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.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, body-giving sauce base.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds rich flavour to the roux.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that gives the soup its body.
Stock
Adds savoury depth and thins the soup to a pourable consistency.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel at the end.
Mushrooms
Provide the main earthy flavour and texture of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually to the roux. Pouring in half the milk while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, mushroom, 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.

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