Skip to main content
Main

Mushroom Soup

A soup made from fresh mushrooms, stock, butter, lemon juice, parsley, and browned flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Mushroom Soup

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and stalk the mushrooms, then break them into pieces.

  2. In a small saucepan, combine the mushrooms, butter, lemon juice, and parsley.

  3. Cover and cook gently until soft enough to be rubbed through a sieve.

Make the stock

  1. Wash the stalks and peelings, tie them in muslin, and simmer in the stock for a short time to extract flavor. Remove the muslin bag.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix the browned flour with cold water.

  2. Add the flour mixture along with the mushroom mixture to the stock.

  3. Boil for 10 to 15 minutes. Skim off any fat during boiling.

  4. Season with salt and pepper. Serve.

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

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  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
Provide the main flavor and, once cooked and rubbed through a sieve, body to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps carry the mushroom flavor when the mushrooms are gently cooked.
Browned flour
Thickens the stock and adds a toasted, nutty note.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the earthy mushroom flavor.

The step that matters

Mix the browned flour with cold water.. Starch granules clump when they hit hot liquid directly. Dispersing the flour in cold water first lets it blend smoothly into the stock, so it thickens evenly without 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.

More mushroom soup recipes

White 3 See all 71 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes