🇺🇸 United States · (the canned form, 1934); the same soup is the French-language velouté de champignons
Cream of mushroom soup
A smooth, creamy soup of sautéed mushrooms thickened with a butter-and-flour roux or béchamel, thinned with stock or milk and finished with cream.
Origin and history
Campbell's says that in 1897 Dr. John T. Dorrance developed a way to condense soup, and that it introduced Cream of Mushroom in 1934, alongside Noodle with Chicken; the canned soup made the name a household one in the United States. The same roux-thickened, creamed soup is made in French-language cooking as velouté de champignons, as in the RTBF recipe used here.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 4 servings
- Total time
- 45 min
- Hands-on
- 30 min
Ingredients
- 500 g1.1 lb brown button mushrooms (champignons de Paris bruns), cleaned, roughly sliced; keep a few slices for garnish
- 1 pinch dried porcini, optional
- 1 shallot, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 25 g2 tbsp butter
- 25 g3 tbsp all-purpose flour
- 750 ml3 cups chicken stock
- 150 ml2/3 cup heavy cream
- chopped parsley, a little
- salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Method
-
1. Set aside a few mushroom slices for garnish. Heat the olive oil in a large pan and cook the rest of the mushrooms with the shallot and parsley, seasoning with salt and pepper.
-
2. Add the dried porcini, if using, and take the pan off the heat as soon as the mushrooms have released their water.
-
3. In a saucepan, melt the butter, stir in the flour and cook for a minute to make a roux.
-
4. Pour in the stock a little at a time, whisking so no lumps form.
-
5. Scrape in the contents of the mushroom pan and simmer for about 15 minutes.
-
6. Blend until completely smooth, then stir in the cream.
-
7. Taste for seasoning and serve hot, topped with the reserved raw or lightly fried mushroom slices.
Notes
- This is the roux-thickened version, in French a velouté de champignons; quantities follow the RTBF recipe for four (its method text says crème fraîche where its ingredient list says liquid cream; either works). A simpler French home version on Evous skips the stock: onion and 500 g of mushrooms are cooked in oil, then 2 tbsp flour, 1/2 litre of milk and 1/4 litre of water go in, and the soup is blended and finished with crème fraîche and parsley.
- Brown mushrooms and a pinch of dried porcini give a deeper flavour than white button mushrooms alone; with white mushrooms alone the soup is paler and milder.
- Vegetable stock makes it vegetarian.
- The condensed canned version popularised by Campbell's is a different, much simpler product and is not what this recipe makes.
- It keeps for 2 to 3 days in the fridge; add the cream when reheating for the best texture. It is related to, but not the same as, the Czech kulajda and the Polish zupa grzybowa.
Adapted from RTBF, Velouté aux champignons (pour 4 personnes), The Campbell Company, Campbell history, and Evous, Velouté de champignons.
At the festivals
Served at 2 festivals in United States and Germany.
Earlier editions
-
February 01, 2026
🇺🇸 Somerville, Massachusetts, United States
Soup Fest (Bow Market)
On the menu as Cream of Mushroom
By Saus
- October 19, 2019