Skip to main content
Main

Mushroom Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled mushrooms, butter, flour, milk, stock, and seasonings.

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

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Peel and boil the mushrooms for two hours.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the melted butter and flour until smooth.

  3. Add the slightly heated milk and a small quantity of stock to the butter-flour mixture.

Finish the soup

  1. Press the soft mushrooms through a fine colander.

  2. Combine the mushroom puree with the milk mixture and season to taste.

  3. Stir constantly in a double saucepan until well heated.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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 flavour and body once pressed into a puree.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture so the soup becomes smooth and creamy.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its body.

The step that matters

Stir constantly in the double saucepan. Milk-based soups can scorch or form a skin on the bottom when overheated. A double saucepan gives gentle, indirect heat, and constant stirring keeps the flour-thickened mixture smooth and prevents sticking.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, flour, milk, pepper):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

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

More mushroom soup recipes

White 3 See all 71 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes