Name: Mushroom Soup
Ingredients: a good quantity of mushrooms; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); 2 cups good stock; 1 tablespoon cream (optional, for white soup)

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

a good quantity of mushrooms
2 tablespoons butter
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')
2 cups good stock
1 tablespoon cream (optional, for white soup)

Directions

Prepare

Cut off the earthy ends of the mushrooms, then pick and wash them.
Prepare a good stock as you would for any other soup.

Make the soup

Stew the mushrooms with butter, pepper, and salt in a little stock until tender.
Remove the mushrooms, chop them finely, and set aside.
Add the chopped mushrooms and the liquid they were stewed in to the stock.
Boil everything together and serve.
For a white soup, use white button mushrooms and veal stock, adding cream.

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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,500 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms: Provide the main flavour and body of the soup once chopped and simmered in the stock.
Butter: Stewing in butter softens the mushrooms and adds richness to the soup.
Cream: Adds smoothness and mild richness, used for the optional white soup.

“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.