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Oyster Soup Maigre

A light soup made with water, onions, butter, mushrooms, oysters, 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

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine 4 pints of water with the fried onions, mace, salt, pepper, and herbs.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  3. Add ½ lb of fresh butter, mushrooms, and 100 oysters.

  4. Thicken the soup with vermicelli and let it simmer gently for 15 minutes.

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 + 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

Vermicelli
Thickens the soup as it simmers, giving it body.
Oysters
Provide the main flavor and a tender, briny texture.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the broth.
Onions
Build savory sweetness and depth as they are fried first.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters. Oysters cook quickly and turn rubbery and shrink if overcooked, so they should be added near the end of simmering rather than boiled for long.

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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