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Cream of Mushroom Soup

A creamy soup made from mushrooms, butter, flour, milk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mushrooms

  1. Melt butter in a pan.

  2. Cook chopped mushrooms until tender but not browned, then remove them.

Make the sauce

  1. Brown the flour in the remaining butter in the same pan.

  2. In a double boiler, cook another 14 cups of diced mushrooms in the milk and cream until the cream has a mushroom flavor, then remove the mushrooms.

  3. Gradually mix the hot milk into the cooked flour.

  4. Return the mixture to the double boiler.

Finish and serve

  1. Add all the mushrooms.

  2. Cook until the soup reaches a good consistency.

  3. Strain the soup.

  4. Serve hot.

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

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

  4. Mushroom + milktop 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

Mushrooms
Provide the main earthy flavor and, once cooked down, the soup's body.
Butter
Carries flavor and forms the fat base that the flour is cooked in.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and gives the soup a smooth, mild body.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Cooking flour in fat cooks out its raw taste and gives it full thickening power. Too little time leaves the soup pasty and floury, while too much heat burns the flour and makes the soup bitter.

“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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