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Oyster Soup

A savory soup made from oysters, butter, flour, milk, stock, and seasonings, finished with optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 81,283 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Put the oysters with their liquor in a stewpan over heat until just boiling.

  2. Drain the oysters through a sieve, catching the liquor in a bowl.

  3. Remove the gills from the oysters and add them to a soup tureen.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir until just white.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add the oyster liquor, gills, milk, and stock.

  5. Stir over heat until boiling.

  6. Season with salt, cayenne, peppercorns, mace, Harvey sauce, and essence of anchovies.

  7. Boil quickly for 10 minutes.

  8. Skim well.

  9. Add cream if available.

  10. Strain the soup over the oysters.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,184 recipes

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

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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 texture of the soup, with their liquor adding brininess.
Butter
Carries the flour to form a roux that thickens the soup and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in butter and combined with the liquid.
Milk
Adds body and creamy softness to the soup.
Stock
Forms the savoury liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the butter. Cooking the flour in melted butter before adding liquid forms a roux. Stirring it smooth and letting it cool before adding liquid helps prevent lumps, so the soup thickens evenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  2. Capersbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, milk, pepper, sauce, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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