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Chicken Soup with Oysters

A broth of chicken and oysters seasoned with pepper, sea salt, and onion juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Soup with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine chicken broth and the liquor from the blanched oysters in a pot.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes, seasoning with pepper, coarse sea salt, and onion juice.

Finish and serve

  1. In a skillet, fry the diced chicken in butter until browned.

  2. Add the fried chicken and oysters to the soup and cook for 2 minutes before serving.

  3. Do not overcook; the oysters should curl at the edges.

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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavour and tender texture when cooked briefly.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Cooked chicken
Adds savoury, browned flavour and body to the soup.

The step that matters

Do not overcook the oysters. Oysters turn firm and rubbery when heated too long, so they should be added near the end and cooked only until their edges curl.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, oyster, pepper, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, oyster, pepper, butter. 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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