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Oatmeal and Mushroom Soup

A soup made with chicken stock, mushrooms, oatmeal, and a white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Oatmeal and Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. Make a white sauce by melting 1 tablespoon of fat, then whisk in the flour and gradually add the milk.

  2. In a separate pan, lightly brown the minced onion in the remaining fat.

Cook the mushrooms and serve

  1. Add the cut mushrooms to the onion and cook for 2 minutes.

  2. Pour in the chicken stock, cover, and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the cooked oatmeal, then combine the white sauce with the mushroom mixture and 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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce with a smooth, body-giving texture.
Skimmed milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce and gives the soup its creamy body.
Cooked oatmeal
Adds body and a soft, thickening texture to the soup.
Mushrooms
Provide the main savory, earthy flavour and a tender bite.
Chicken stock
Supplies the savoury liquid that carries the mushroom flavour through the soup.

The step that matters

Whisk the flour into the melted fat before adding the milk. Cooking flour in fat first lets it disperse evenly; adding milk gradually while whisking prevents lumps, giving a smooth white sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, milk, 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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