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Cream Mushroom Soup

A creamy soup made with canned mushrooms, white stock, sweet milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a pot over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir until well combined.

  3. Pour in the stock and milk, stirring continuously.

Season and finish

  1. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

  2. Add the chopped mushrooms and heat through.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries the flavor of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot butter and liquid.
White stock
Provides the savory liquid base that the soup is built on.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess and a smooth, rounded body to the soup.
Canned mushrooms
Supply the main earthy flavor and soft, meaty texture.

The step that matters

Adding the stock and milk. Pour the liquid in gradually while stirring constantly. Flour starch needs to disperse evenly in the hot fat and liquid so it swells smoothly instead of clumping into lumps.

“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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