Name: Oyster Soup
Ingredients: 1 quart fresh juicy oysters, hard part; 6 hard boiled egg yolks; 1 quart fresh oysters, trimmed and washed; Mace, to taste; Cayenne, to taste; 3 egg yolks

Why it works: Oyster and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,103 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Pound the hard part of the oysters with the yolks of six hard boiled eggs in a mortar.
Combine with veal stock in a pot and simmer for 30 minutes.
Strain the mixture into a clean saucepan.
Add another quart of trimmed oysters, mace, and cayenne, and simmer for 10 minutes.
Beat the yolks of three eggs in a cup, take out a little soup to cool, then mix it gradually with the eggs.
Remove the soup from the heat and stir in the egg mixture continuously until serving to prevent curdling.

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.

Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,103 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Oyster + macetop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,910 recipes
Egg + macetop 35% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,587 recipes