Skip to main content
Main

Mushroom Soup

A creamy soup made with fresh mushrooms, butter, milk, cornstarch, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Mushroom Soup

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine the chopped mushrooms, butter, salt, and pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Add the milk and bring the mixture to a boil.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the cornstarch with the cold milk, then stir the mixture into the soup until slightly thickened.

  2. Remove from heat.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup.
Cornstarch
Thickens the soup when heated with liquid.
Egg yolks
Add richness and further thicken the soup when stirred in off the heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the mushrooms as they cook.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they meet very hot liquid. Removing the pan from heat before stirring them in lets them thicken the soup gently and smoothly.

“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.

More mushroom soup recipes

White 3 See all 71 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes