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Oyster Soup Maigre

A light oyster soup made with water, onions, butter, mushrooms, and vermicelli.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 12,525 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Oyster Soup Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, bring 4 pints of water to a boil.

  2. Add 5 or 6 fried onions, mace, coarse sea salt, pepper, and your choice of herbs.

  3. Boil and skim the mixture carefully.

  4. Stir in 1 lb of fresh butter and a few mushrooms.

  5. Add 100 oysters and thicken with vermicelli.

  6. Let the soup boil gently for 15 minutes until finished.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,626 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,184 recipes

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

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, cooking briefly in the broth.
Vermicelli
Thickens the broth as its starch softens during simmering.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a rounded, silky mouthfeel to the broth.
Onions
Build sweetness and savoury depth as they are fried before going into the broth.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savour and some body to the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters. Oysters toughen and turn rubbery and shrink when boiled hard for too long. Adding them near the end and keeping the simmer gentle preserves their tenderness and delicate flavour.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

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