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Oyster Soup

A simple soup made with oysters, oyster liquor, herbs, and butter, served with oyster crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine the oyster liquor, salt, pepper, parsley, celery, and butter in a porcelain-lined kettle.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the oysters and remove them as soon as they are plump.

Serve

  1. Place a few oyster crackers in a soup tureen and pour the boiling soup over them.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 tender texture, and curl up when they are cooked.
Oyster liquor
Carries the briny oyster flavour and forms the liquid base of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the broth.
Celery
Adds a fresh, mildly vegetal note that balances the brininess.

The step that matters

Remove the oysters as soon as they are plump. Oysters toughen and shrink quickly when overheated. Pulling them out at the first sign of plumping keeps them tender and juicy rather than rubbery.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, parsley, 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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