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Soup

Mushroom

A mushroom soup made by boiling mushrooms in stock with spices and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the mushrooms in the stock with cloves, peppercorns, mace, lemon peel, garlic, bay leaves, and shallots.

  2. Cook until the mushrooms are soft enough to pass through a sieve.

  3. Strain the mixture, seasoning with Nepaul pepper and salt to taste.

  4. If desired, add a little claret before serving.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the body of the soup, releasing their flavour and thickening it as they soften and break down.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet aromatic base that rounds out the savoury stock.
Garlic
Adds pungent aromatic depth that mellows during long simmering.
Strong stock
Supplies the main liquid and savoury backbone of the soup.

The step that matters

Cook until the mushrooms are soft enough to pass through a sieve. Mushrooms must soften fully so their cell walls break down; undercooked pieces will not pass smoothly and leave a gritty, uneven texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, clove, lemon, garlic, shallot, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, clove, lemon, garlic, shallot, 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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