Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Soup

A creamy oyster soup made with oysters, fish stock, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Oyster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 603 recipes mention both. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Place oysters in a small saucepan with their liquor and bring to almost boiling, then strain.

  2. Remove the gills from the oysters, cut them in half, and set aside for later.

  3. Simmer the gills in the liquor and stock for 30 minutes to extract flavor.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and rinse the saucepan.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in the saucepan without browning it, then add the flour and mix until smooth.

  2. Pour in the stock and stir constantly over heat until boiling, skimming if necessary.

  3. Season with white pepper, salt, anchovy essence, and cayenne pepper.

  4. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk with the cream and strain into the soup, stirring constantly off the heat.

Serve

  1. Place the oysters in a soup tureen and pour the soup over them before serving.

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. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Oyster + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together496 recipes

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

  4. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and tender texture of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and must not brown to keep the soup pale.
Flour
Mixed with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the soup when stirred in off the heat.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the soup's body.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream. Egg yolk sets when heated, so the mixture must be stirred constantly and added off the heat; otherwise it can curdle or turn grainy instead of creamy.

“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.

More oyster soup recipes

Mock 19White 16Vegetable 8Chicken 3Cream 3 See all 520 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes