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Cream of Mushroom Soup

A soup made with mushrooms, onion, broth, flour, butter, cream, 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 chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine chopped mushrooms, onion, and broth in a pot.

  2. Cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Rub mixture through a sieve to remove solids and reheat the liquid.

Make the soup

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour and cook until bubbling.

  3. Stir in ⅔ cup of mushroom broth and mix well.

  4. Add remaining broth.

  5. Stir in cream.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

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 + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main flavor and body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a roux.
Chicken or veal broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the mushroom flavor.
Cream
Adds smoothness and richness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and butter until bubbling. Cooking the flour in melted butter drives off raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken the liquid evenly. Adding the broth before the roux is smooth can leave lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, chicken, flour, cream, pepper. 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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