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Soup

Mock Oyster Soup

A soup made from sliced vegetable oysters simmered with water, onion, parsley, and finished with a butter‑flour milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Mock Oyster Soup

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mock Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the vegetable oysters, place them in cold water with vinegar or lemon juice to prevent discoloration, and cut into thin slices.

Cook the oysters

  1. In a stew pan, combine the sliced vegetable oysters, boiling water, onion, and parsley; cook slowly for 30 minutes or until tender.

Make the soup

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk; mix the butter and flour together, then stir into the milk until smooth and thickened.

  2. Once the vegetable oysters are tender, strain them through a colander, add them to the double boiler, season with salt and pepper, and serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Vegetable oysters
Provide the main flavour and texture of the soup, as the base vegetable.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the soup.
Butter and flour
Together form a roux that thickens the milk into a smooth soup.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the milk. Adding the flour mixture all at once or unevenly can leave lumps. Blending it smoothly into warm milk lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the soup without clumping.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, milk, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, vinegar. 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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