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Mushroom Soup

A soup of fresh mushrooms, haricot beans, lemon rind, onion, mace, parsley, thyme, pepper, salt, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Mushroom Soup

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the vegetables.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a pot with 2 quarts of water.

Simmer and strain

  1. Bring to a boil and simmer for 2.5 hours.

  2. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve and return to the saucepan.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main earthy flavour and body of the soup.
Haricot beans
Thicken the soup as they break down during long simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Spanish onion
Builds a sweet, savoury base flavour as it cooks slowly.

The step that matters

Simmer and strain. Simmering gently for the full 2.5 hours lets the beans and vegetables soften and release flavour. Passing the mixture through a sieve then removes the solids so the soup becomes smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, beans, lemon, onion, clove, parsley, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, beans, lemon, onion, clove, parsley, thyme. 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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