Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Oyster Soup

A soup made with oysters, white sauce, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Oyster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,233 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cream of Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters with ½ cup cold water in a colander, removing any bits of shell. Reserve the liquid.

  2. Heat the reserved liquid gradually to boiling, then let the oysters simmer until plump and edges curl.

  3. Drain the oysters and skim the liquid.

Make the soup

  1. Make a white sauce.

  2. Add the hot strained oyster liquid, salt, and pepper to the sauce and cook until smooth.

  3. Add the oysters and serve hot with toasted oyster crackers.

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. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and texture of the soup as they plump and curl when simmered.
White sauce
Forms the creamy, smooth body that carries the oyster flavour.

The step that matters

Let the oysters simmer only until plump and edges curl. Oysters are delicate protein; overcooking toughens them and makes them rubbery, so they should be removed as soon as the edges curl.

“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.

You might also like

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes