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Oyster Soup

A soup made with oysters, water or poultry stock, butter, flour, egg yolks, sweet milk, and served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine water or liquor from boiled fowl with oysters, salt, and pepper.

  2. In a small bowl, mix butter and flour until smooth, then add to the pot.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and mix with sweet milk and strained oyster liquor, then add to the pot.

  4. Cook for a few minutes until heated through.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup into a tureen over slices of dry toasted bread and serve hot.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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
Provide the main flavor and tender texture of the soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it gently as they heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor through the broth.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when cooked with the butter and liquid.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess and softens the briny oyster flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and milk mixture. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is boiling when they are added. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring while adding them helps the soup stay smooth and creamy.

“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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