Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Soup

A savory soup made with oysters, milk, fish stock, onion, peppercorns, herbs, and seasonings, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the fish stock and the liquid from the oysters in a special saucepan.

  2. Add the onion, peppercorns, and herbs, and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and return it to the saucepan with the milk.

Thicken and finish

  1. When nearly boiling, thicken with cornflour and boil for 2-3 minutes.

  2. Add the oysters and simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Season with lemon juice, nutmeg, and salt.

  4. Serve in a warm tureen with fried bread.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Oyster + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 of the soup when briefly simmered.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy body to the broth.
Cornflour
Thickens the liquid as it boils, giving the soup body.
Fish stock
Forms the savoury base that carries the rest of the flavours.

The step that matters

Thicken with cornflour before adding the oysters. Cornflour needs to reach a boil to swell and thicken fully, or the soup stays thin and starchy-tasting. Oysters go in afterward and only simmer briefly, since overcooking toughens them and makes them rubbery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, milk, fish, clove, lemon, nutmeg, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, milk, fish, clove, lemon, nutmeg, bread. 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.

More oyster soup recipes

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipes