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Oyster Soup

A creamy soup made with milk, butter, flour, oyster liquor, and oysters, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk over boiling water.

  2. Drain the oysters.

  3. Reserve the oyster liquor in a saucepan on the stove.

  4. Wash the oysters and remove any shell particles.

Make the base

  1. Mix the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Thin the mixture with a little milk.

  3. Cook the mixture, stirring slowly, until slightly thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the hot oyster liquor.

  2. Add the drained oysters.

  3. Serve the soup as soon as the oysters are puffed and the edges are curled.

  4. Substitute half a pint of cream for the butter for extra richness.

  5. Serve with small crackers crisped in the oven.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid body of the soup and, once thickened, its creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and forms the base with flour for thickening.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when cooked with butter, giving the soup body.
Oyster liquor
Supplies the briny, savoury flavour of the oysters to the soup.
Oysters
Provide the main flavour and protein of the soup and cook briefly in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Serve as soon as the oysters puff and curl. Oysters toughen and shrink when overcooked, so they should be removed from heat as soon as the edges curl to keep them tender.

“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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