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Cream of Oyster Soup

A creamy soup made with oysters, milk, butter, flour, salt, white pepper, and oyster liquor.

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 ↓

Cream of Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Remove the gills from the oysters.

  2. Rinse the oysters.

  3. Heat the oysters in a saucepan until the edges curl.

Make the broth and white sauce

  1. Heat the oyster liquor until it becomes milky.

  2. Remove any scum from the oyster liquor.

  3. Melt the butter. Add flour to the butter.

  4. Whisk in the milk until smooth.

  5. Strain the white sauce.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the strained sauce to the heated oyster liquor.

  2. Add the oysters to the mixture. Stir gently.

  3. Serve hot with crisp crackers.

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. Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

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

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

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and tender texture of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the soup and gives it a mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and enriches the flavor of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Oyster liquor
Supplies the briny oyster flavor and forms the soup's base liquid.

The step that matters

Whisk in the milk until smooth. Adding milk to the butter and flour roux too quickly or without whisking can leave lumps. Whisking keeps the starch evenly dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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