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Cream of Oyster Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cream of Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Heat the milk and strained oyster liquor in separate pots.

  2. In a saucepan, rub together the butter and flour, then cook until bubbling.

Make and finish the soup

  1. Pour the hot milk into the butter-flour mixture, stirring until thick and smooth.

  2. Add the oyster liquor, drop in the oysters, and cook for 3 minutes.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and mace, then serve immediately, adding lemon juice after plating.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Provide the main flavor and texture of the soup as the seafood base.
Oyster liquor
Adds concentrated briny oyster flavor and liquid to the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid body of the soup.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and combines with flour to form a roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup as part of a butter roux when combined with hot milk.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot milk into the roux. Adding hot milk to the butter-flour mixture while stirring lets starch granules disperse and gelatinize evenly, giving a smooth, thick sauce rather than lumps.

Swap the mace

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

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

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