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Cream of Mushroom Soup

A creamy soup made with mushrooms, butter, flour, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mushrooms

  1. Combine the mushrooms, 1 tablespoon of butter, and 2 tablespoons of water in a small skillet. Cover and simmer slowly until the mushrooms are tender, about 30 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the milk in another saucepan until it reaches a scalding point.

  2. Blend the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter with the flour, salt, and white pepper.

  3. Stir this mixture into the hot milk.

  4. Once the milk boils, add the simmered mushroom mixture and serve hot with toasted bread cubes or crackers.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provides the soup's earthy flavor and body as they soften.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and is blended with the flour.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the thickened mixture is stirred into.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour mixture into hot milk. Flour must disperse evenly in the liquid before its starch swells and thickens. Stirring it into hot milk, rather than dropping it in, helps prevent lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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