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Delicious Oyster Bisque

A creamy soup made from oysters, celery, milk, butter, flour, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Delicious Oyster Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Simmer chopped celery in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain, wash oysters, then cook them in a saucepan for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain oysters again, keep the liquor, and mix with the celery.

Finish the bisque

  1. Add milk to the mixture.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine butter and flour; add to mixture and cook 10 minutes.

  3. Strain bisque through a sieve and stir in white pepper.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 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

Celery
Softens and releases flavor into the water, giving the bisque its base taste.
Oysters
Provide the main briny, savory flavor of the bisque.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the bisque.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor.
Flour
Thickens the bisque when cooked with the butter.

The step that matters

Combining butter and flour into the bisque. Flour mixed with butter, then cooked, forms a roux that thickens the liquid. Adding it without cooking it long enough can leave a raw floury taste and uneven thickness.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, oyster, milk, butter, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, oyster, milk, butter, flour. 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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