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Cream of Oyster

A creamy oyster soup made with oysters, butter, flour, milk, and whipped cream.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Put the oysters in a saucepan over medium heat in their own liquor and bring to a boil.

  2. Drain the oysters and chop the white part very fine.

  3. Strain the liquor, then add the chopped oysters back to the saucepan and simmer for a few minutes.

Make the cream

  1. In a separate bowl, blend the butter with the flour, then add the milk and stir until smooth.

  2. Add the chopped oysters and their liquor to the milk mixture.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the 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.

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and the tender pieces that make up the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives a smooth mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Blended with butter to thicken the milk into a smooth, creamy base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a creamy body.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and extra richness when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and milk until smooth. Flour thickens only when its starch is dispersed evenly in liquid; adding it lumpy or too quickly leaves clumps, so blending the flour with butter first and stirring the milk in gradually helps keep the sauce smooth.

“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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