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Mushroom Soup

A creamy soup made from mushrooms, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Mushroom Soup

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Pick, peel, and wash the mushrooms; cut them into pieces with a silver knife.

  2. Place the mushrooms in a porcelain saucepan; add lemon juice, boiling water, and salt. Stir with a silver fork and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Let the mushrooms cool, then drain and chop them finely.

Make the soup

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk.

  2. Rub together the butter and flour, then stir into the milk. Cook until creamy, then add the chopped mushrooms.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. If using white mushrooms, add the egg yolk just before removing from heat.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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 bulk of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the flour thickens.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the soup body.
Butter
Fat that cooks with the flour to form a roux for thickening.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mushroom flavor and helps keep them pale.
Egg yolk
Enriches and slightly thickens the soup when added at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk just before removing from heat. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so if the soup gets too hot or boils after the yolk goes in, it can curdle or turn grainy. Adding it last, off the heat, keeps it smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

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