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Cream of Oysters

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

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

  2. When the oysters are just about to boil, remove them from the heat.

Make the base

  1. In another saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the milk to the roux, stirring constantly until thickened.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the oysters and their liquor to the thickened milk mixture.

  2. Season with salt 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. 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 texture of the dish, with their liquor adding savory brininess.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the thickened roux turns into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and is the fat that forms the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk by forming a roux with the butter, giving the soup body.

The step that matters

Adding milk to the roux. Milk must be added gradually while stirring constantly so the starch in the flour hydrates evenly, producing a smooth sauce without lumps.

“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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