Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Soup

A soup made from oysters, eggs, celery, nutmeg, mace, cloves, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the oysters and remove the hard parts.

  2. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into pieces and pound them with the oysters in a mortar.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the oyster liquor with chopped celery, nutmeg, mace, cloves, salt, and whole pepper.

  2. Once boiled, stir in the pounded eggs and oysters gradually.

  3. Bring to a boil one more time, then 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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.
Hard-boiled eggs
Pounded into the broth to thicken it and add a rich, creamy body.
Celery
Adds a fresh, savory aroma and background flavor to the broth.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the pounded eggs and oysters gradually. Adding the pounded mixture slowly into the hot liquor helps it disperse evenly instead of clumping, so the soup thickens smoothly and stays uniform in texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, egg, celery, nutmeg, clove, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, egg, celery, nutmeg, clove, 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.

More oyster soup recipes

Mock 19White 16Vegetable 8Chicken 3Cream 3 See all 520 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes