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Oyster Soup

A soup made from oysters, bread crumbs, egg yolks, consommé, spices, and optional cream, served with fried bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,557 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open oysters, save liquor, strain into a bowl.

  2. Remove gills, boil oysters with beards in a small saucepan with a little consommé for 15‑20 minutes.

  3. Pound oysters to pulp with bread crumbs and hard‑boiled egg yolks.

Make the soup

  1. Strain boiled liquor from beards into a stewpan, add oyster liquor and pulp, simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Rub mixture through a fine sieve, keep hot without boiling.

  3. Season with cayenne, mace, nutmeg, salt if needed, stir in cream if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen with fried bread cubes.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 body of the soup once pounded into the pulp.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the soup and give it body as they absorb liquid.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the pulp into a smooth, creamy texture.
Consommé
Forms the clear savoury liquid base that carries the oyster flavour.

The step that matters

Rub mixture through a fine sieve, keep hot without boiling.. Pressing the pulp through a fine sieve removes fibrous bits for a smooth texture. Boiling can cause the egg yolks to curdle and the soup to turn grainy, so keep it hot but below a simmer.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, bread, egg, mace, nutmeg, cream):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Allspicebetter flavor fit
  3. Clovebetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, bread, egg, mace, nutmeg, 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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