Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Soup

A creamy soup made with oysters, water, cream, crackers, butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Drain the oysters and reserve the liquor.

  2. Combine the oyster liquor and 1 pint of water.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Skim off any foam.

Make the soup

  1. Add the oysters.

  2. Stir gently.

  3. Stir in 1 cup of cream.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

  5. Add ½ cup of rolled cracker.

  6. Bring to a gentle boil.

  7. Remove from heat.

  8. Stir in 1 tablespoon of butter.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and tender texture of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body.
Rolled cracker
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch absorbs liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel at the end.

The step that matters

Bring to a gentle boil after adding the cream and cracker. Boiling vigorously after cream is added can cause it to curdle or separate, and the cracker needs gentle heat to thicken evenly. Oysters also toughen and shrink when overcooked, so a gentle simmer keeps 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.

More oyster soup recipes

Mock 19White 16Vegetable 8Chicken 3Cream 3 See all 520 →

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes