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Mushroom Soup

A creamy mushroom soup made with brown stock, onions, butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Mushroom Soup

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Skin the mushrooms and slice the onion.

  2. Heat 1 oz of butter in a pan and fry the onion and mushrooms for 3 to 4 minutes.

  3. Remove 12 of the smallest mushrooms and set them aside.

Make the soup

  1. Add the brown stock and seasoning to the pan, and boil for 30 minutes or until the mushrooms are soft.

  2. Pour the soup through a fine sieve, rubbing the pulp through.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the soup to the pan, add the reserved small mushrooms, and mix the flour with the remaining butter into a ball.

  2. Boil gently for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the soup into a tureen containing the cream, and add a little sugar if desired.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the body and main flavour of the soup once softened and pulped.
Brown stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury depth for the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the onion and mushroom flavour during frying.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding and cooking the flour and butter ball. Flour thickens only when heated, and it can clump if added raw. Boiling gently for the stated time lets the starch swell evenly and cooks out the raw flour taste, so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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