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Oyster Soup

A creamy oyster soup made with oysters, milk, eggs, and seasonings, served with crackers and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Strain the liquor from the oysters into a saucepan.

  2. Mix in the water.

  3. Season with cayenne pepper, salt, and mace to taste.

  4. When the liquor boils, add a quarter of the oysters chopped fine.

  5. Boil for five minutes.

  6. Strain through muslin.

  7. Return to the saucepan.

Thicken and cook the oysters

  1. Thicken with butter rubbed up in corn-starch.

  2. When this thickened mixture boils, drop in the whole oysters.

  3. Cook until they ruffle.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk and salt it.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and stir for four minutes over the fire to make a custard.

Assemble and serve

  1. Put split crackers into a tureen.

  2. Pour the custard over the crackers.

  3. Pour the oyster soup over the custard.

  4. Stir well.

  5. Serve with oyster crackers and sliced lemon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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 body of the soup when cooked briefly.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the custard base.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the thickened broth.
Eggs
Thicken the milk into a custard when stirred over heat.
Corn-starch
Thickens the strained broth so it coats the oysters.

The step that matters

Add the beaten eggs and stir over the fire to make the custard. Egg proteins set when heated, but if the mixture gets too hot or is stirred too little, the eggs can scramble and turn grainy instead of forming a smooth custard.

Swap the mace

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

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

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