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Oyster Soup

A soup made with oysters, milk, water, flour, butter, pepper, and salt.

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 ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Place a strainer over a bowl.

  2. Pour the oysters into the strainer.

  3. Pour cold water over the oysters and stir until all liquid passes through the strainer.

  4. When the oyster liquor boils, skim it.

Make the soup

  1. Reserve ½ cup of the milk.

  2. Pour the remaining milk into a double boiler set over heat.

  3. Heat the oyster liquor in a saucepan slowly.

  4. Mix the reserved cold milk with the flour.

  5. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk.

  6. Cook for 10 minutes.

  7. Add the oysters, butter, salt, pepper, and oyster liquor to the milk mixture.

  8. Cook until the oysters curl at the edges and are plump.

  9. Serve immediately.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and tender texture of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes creamy and smooth.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour mixed with cold milk first disperses evenly; adding it to hot milk while stirring prevents lumps, and the starch thickens as the milk simmers.

“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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