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Oyster Soup Without Oysters

A creamy soup made from onions, turnip, water, milk, butter, flour, pepper, salt, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Oyster Soup Without Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the onions and turnip in enough water to cover them until soft.

  2. Mash the mixture very smooth through a colander.

Finish the soup

  1. Boil the mashed mixture again in the milk.

  2. Mix the flour with the butter and stir into the soup.

  3. Let it boil thoroughly and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and mace.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Cook down to a soft, sweet base that gives the soup its body and flavor.
Turnip
Adds mild earthy flavor and starch that thickens the mashed soup as it cooks.
Milk
Provides richness and a creamy texture, mellowing the vegetable flavors.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it a smooth, heavier body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries the flour so it blends in smoothly.

The step that matters

Mash the mixture very smooth through a colander. Any remaining lumps of cooked onion or turnip will stay in the finished soup and spoil its texture. Pressing the vegetables fully through the colander breaks down their fibres so the soup comes out smooth and creamy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, turnip, milk, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, milk, butter, flour, pepper. 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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