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Soup

Cream of Fresh Mushrooms

A creamy soup made from fresh mushrooms, butter, flour, milk, and water, seasoned with salt, white pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream of Fresh Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Wash and peel the mushrooms, then boil them in a quart of boiling water until tender.

  2. Rub the cooked mushrooms through a sieve using a potato masher.

Make the cream

  1. In a thick saucepan, melt the butter and flour together until bubbling.

  2. Gradually stir in the hot milk and boiling water, half a cup at a time, stirring smoothly.

  3. Once all the liquid is added, season with salt, white pepper, and grated nutmeg.

  4. Stir in the mushroom puree, let it boil once, and then 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. 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Fresh mushrooms
Form the main body and flavor of the soup once pureed.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor when melted with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy base when cooked with butter.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that gives the soup its body and richness.

The step that matters

Adding the hot liquid gradually. Stirring the hot milk and boiling water into the butter and flour a little at a time keeps the starch dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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