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Mushroom Soup

A creamy soup made with mushrooms, chicken stock, pearl sago, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Mushroom Soup

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 ↓

Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and chop the mushrooms.

Make the soup

  1. Add the mushrooms to the chicken stock and cook for 20 minutes.

  2. Cook the pearl sago in boiling water for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the cooked sago to the stock.

Finish

  1. Once boiling, stir in the cream and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Heat through and serve.

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.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Mushroom + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,987 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 earthy, savory flavor that forms the base of the soup.
Chicken stock
Serves as the liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.
Pearl sago
Its starch swells and gelatinises in the hot stock, giving the soup body.
Rich sweet cream
Its fat adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Their proteins set when gently heated, thickening and enriching the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by coagulating when heated gently. If the soup is boiling hard when the beaten yolks go in, they can scramble and turn grainy, so keep the heat moderate while stirring.

“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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