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Cream of Stock Soup

A creamy soup made with butter, flour, stock, cream, and optional mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom 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 ↓

Cream of Stock Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and salt until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the stock, stirring continuously.

  4. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the cream and heat for 5 minutes without boiling.

Serve

  1. If desired, add cooked fresh mushrooms just before serving.

  2. Serve in bouillon cups for lunch or as a dinner soup.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 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

Butter
Forms the fat base that is cooked with the flour into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich soup as it cooks.
Stock
Provides the main savoury flavour and liquid base of the soup.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the cream without boiling. Once the cream is added, boiling can cause it to separate or curdle, so it should be heated gently for the stated 5 minutes only.

“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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