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Oyster Soup

A creamy oyster soup made with oysters, stock, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Prepare the oysters

  1. Put the oysters with their liquor in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. When just boiling, drain the oysters through a sieve, catching the liquor in a bowl.

  3. Remove the beards from the oysters and add the beards to the liquor.

  4. Place the oysters in a soup tureen.

Make the soup

  1. In another stewpan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir until just white, then let the mixture cool.

  3. Add the oyster liquor and beards, milk, and stock.

  4. Stir over medium heat until boiling.

  5. Season with salt, cayenne, peppercorns, mace, Harvey sauce, and essence of anchovies.

  6. Boil quickly for 10 minutes.

  7. Skim well.

  8. Add cream if using.

  9. Strain the soup through a fine sieve over the oysters.

Serve

  1. 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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
Main ingredient providing the soup's characteristic briny flavour and body.
Butter
Fat that forms the base of the roux and carries flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as a roux with the melted butter.
Milk
Adds richness and body, softening the soup's texture.
Stock
Provides the main liquid and savoury depth of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel when used.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and stock to the roux. Cooling the roux before adding liquid helps prevent lumps, because flour disperses more evenly in liquid when the roux is less hot. Stirring while the mixture comes to a boil keeps the thickening smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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