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Oyster Soup

A creamy soup made with oysters, potatoes, butter, and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Pour 1 quart of boiling water into a skillet.

  2. Add 1 pint of milk and stir in 1 cup of rolled cracker crumbs.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Add the oysters and potatoes

  1. Add 1 quart of fresh oysters and stir well to prevent scorching.

  2. Add 1 quart of sliced raw potatoes and let it boil.

  3. Add a piece of butter the size of an egg and let it boil once.

  4. Remove from heat immediately, dish up, and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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, briny body of the soup.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, thickening the soup as they cook and soften.
Milk
Gives the soup its creamy liquid base and mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel at the end.
Crackers
Their crumbs thicken the liquid and add subtle toasted, grain-like flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the oysters in. Oysters are delicate and overcook quickly, turning rubbery and shrinking. Stirring well keeps the mixture evenly heated and reduces scorching on the pan bottom, while the brief boil is all they need before serving.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

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