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Fresh Mushroom Soup

A creamy soup made with fresh mushrooms, stock, cream, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fresh Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Rinse the mushrooms under cold water without soaking them.

  2. Peel the mushrooms.

  3. Remove the stems.

  4. Scrape the mushrooms.

  5. Cut the mushrooms into small pieces.

  6. Add them to the stock.

  7. Boil for 15 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a separate pan.

  2. Stir in the flour without browning it.

  3. Add the roux to the stock and mushrooms.

  4. Stir until it thickens.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Stir in the heated cream just 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + creamtop 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

Mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the mushroom flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as a roux with the melted butter.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour without browning it. Flour cooked in butter thickens best when it stays pale; browning weakens its thickening power and changes the soup's flavor and color.

“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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