I’m all over it - their Cream of Celery is their Cream of Mushrooom, minus a bit of mushroom flavour plus some celery bits / chunks.
There, boom, done and done…love, peace and hair grease.
You’re welcome.
Not even a conspiracy - it most likely is. A giant food enterprise like that would want to cut down on having multiple production processes as much as possible. Having a versatile “Cream of ___” and only having to add or subtract a couple of things would be the best and simplest practice.
You could even get 2 cans of the stuff and do a comparison of the ingredients. If they are mostly identical, but only with celery, mushroom and whatnot being the difference, then you’ve nailed it.
Well, you know the cream of chicken is a lie. Cream doesn’t come from chickens!
And don’t even think of asking about the origin of Cream of Sum Guy!
I often substitute cream of celery, cream of onion, or golden mushroom soup in place of cream of mushroom in casserole/back of the box kind of recipes. I prefer the flavor.
Campbell’s Cream of Celery Soup ingredients:
Water, Celery, Vegetable Oil (corn, Canola, And/or Soybean), Modified Food Starch, Wheat Flour, Contains Less Than 2% Of: Salt, Cream, Whey, Soy Protein Concentrate, Monosodium Glutamate, Yeast Extract, Beta Carotene For Color, Natural Flavoring, Onion Extract.
Cambell’s Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup ingredients:
WATER, MUSHROOMS, CANOLA OR SOYBEAN OIL, WHEAT FLOUR, CREAM, CORNSTARCH, SALT, MODIFIED MILK INGREDIENTS, SOY PROTEIN ISOLATE, MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE, TOMATO PASTE, SPICE EXTRACT, BARLEY YEAST EXTRACT AND DEHYDRATED GARLIC.
At least they aren’t selling baby oil.
Bravo !
So, the mushroom soup ingredients are all uppercase !
That would explain the difference in taste.
And one’s missing the tomato.
Make it from scratch. It’s fabulous.
Well, this is pretty common in large food manufactures – the base ingredients are the same for similar but different products.
For another example, Hostess makes a chocolate cupcake with a cream center.
Covered with a chocolate frosting with a vanilla swirl on top, they are sold as Hostess Cupcakes. But turn them upside down, cover with a marshmallow frosting with coconut flakes, and they are sold as Hostess Snoballs.
Two apparently quite different snacks, but the exact same center inside.
Is it just me or does the cream of mushroom taste weaker than it used to?
I am pretty sure that Campbells has changed their recipes over the years - I know that currently the Chicken Noodle/Rice/Veggies non cream soups taste like salty dishwater, and pretty much either have to be dilluted with homemade chicken stock or boxed chicken stock to taste like anything much now.
I know that when cooking at home, I make any ‘chowder’ with the exact same base and just switch out the protein from chicken to shrimp to picked crab to chopped cod depending on what I want. I also will make clam chowder with a tub of picked clams [I can not taste for correction as I am allergic, but the base chowder without the chopped clams tastes just fine and people tell me that once the clams have been added it tastes quite nice]
I start by frying up 4 or 5 strips of bacon for using as garnish and fat, or a splash of olive oil if it needs to be vegetarian. Sautee the mirepoix [diced celery, carrot and onion] after pulling out the bacon bits [if needed] then I shake the flour over the veggies and stir it in, let the flour get coated in fat and start toasting lightly, then dump in chicken stock and stir, then half and half, simmer gently until it thickens and dump in raw fish, shrimp, scallops, clams/cooked chicken, crab, leftover something to chowderize and stir gently and serve when cooked through. If making clam chowder, one can toss in the clam juice in the package with the clams. But the cream base is seasoned with salt, pepper, thyme and a bay leaf - I find those blend with pretty much everything.
Homemade soups are so doggone much better, but maybe not as convenient. But yeah, buy or make the stock and make the soup.
Regarding Campbells “Cream of” anything is going to taste terrible with only 3 drops of dairy and wheat flour used as the thickener/whitener is awful. That goes for any cream soup in a can, especially the cafeteria stuff.
When I played Army back in the day, cans of Cream of Mushroom were among my C-rations—I used to eat the soup directly from the tin.
Tasting it nowadays, it does seem a lot weaker before I add milk and butter—nowhere near as thick and creamy.
You know a bowl of cream of mushroom soup sounds disgusting to me. But put that same can of mushroom soup in a green bean casserole and it’s freak’n delicious!
Seems like a paradox to me.
Grrr, real CoM is very, very rich and delicious but you can’t eat a whole bowl of it. A cup, tops, because it uses a much higher ratio of cream to flour, not half-and-half, not milk. But I’ve had stuff that was so bad you could feel the flour grains in your mouth and that’s just wrong.
All that, I know of those who don’t like it as soup but love it in hotdish (casserole) meals. It’s usually a texture issue.
The low-sodium version of Campbell’s chicken vegetable soup is actually pretty good. Though I don’t know about the regular version-- I can’t tolerate that much salt any more.
They even do one label in caps. Impressive.