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Soup

Brown Mushroom Soup

A soup made with brown stock, mushrooms, pepper, salt, ketchup, glaze, lemon juice, flour, and gravy coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Brown Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the stock and mushrooms together for 20 minutes.

  2. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the glaze and gravy coloring.

  2. Thicken with the flour, stirring until it comes to a boil.

  3. Add the ketchup and lemon juice, then 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.

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

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

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

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

  3. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavor of the dish.
Mushrooms
Give the soup its main flavor and body as they simmer in the stock.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it comes to a boil, giving it body.
Glaze
Adds richness and depth of flavor and color to the soup.

The step that matters

Thicken with the flour, stirring until it comes to a boil. Flour must be stirred in evenly and brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens the liquid. Adding it in lumps or skipping the boil leaves the soup floury and thin.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Red currantfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, ketchup, 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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