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Mushroom Soup

A creamy soup made with mushrooms, butter, flour, milk, and whipped cream, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 mushrooms

  1. Peel and stew the mushrooms in 1 cup of water until reduced by half.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes and strain the liquid.

  3. Fry the mushrooms in butter and then remove them.

Make the soup

  1. Add 2 tablespoons of flour to the butter and mix well.

  2. Gradually add the hot mushroom juice and 1 pint of hot milk, stirring constantly.

  3. Chop the mushrooms finely and stir them back into the soup.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then add 1 and ½ cups of whipped cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

Mushrooms
Provide the main flavour and body of the soup, with their liquid forming the base.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the fried mushrooms and forms the base for the roux.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the thickened mushroom liquid.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a silky texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the hot liquid to the roux. Pouring the hot mushroom juice and milk in gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour smooth. Adding it all at once can trap lumps of starch that do not dissolve evenly.

“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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