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Cream of Mushrooms

A creamy mushroom soup made with fresh mushrooms, milk, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Cream of Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash, skin, and stem the mushrooms.

  2. Boil the skins and stems in 1 cup of boiling water for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the skins and stems.

  4. Chop the mushroom caps very fine.

  5. Add the chopped caps to the strained water.

  6. Cook until tender.

  7. Press the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the cream soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk, garlic, salt, and pepper.

  4. Bring to a boil until thickened.

  5. Add the mushroom stock.

  6. Boil briefly.

  7. Remove the garlic.

  8. 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.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 when melted with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that thickens with the flour and becomes silky when heated.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and gradually adding the milk. Flour clumps if added to hot fat without stirring, and milk added too quickly can lump. Stirring constantly and adding liquid gradually keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, flour, milk, clove, 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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