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Oyster Soup

A soup made with milk, hot water, oysters, and oyster crackers, seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine 2 quarts of new milk and 1 pint of hot water in a large pot. Bring to a boil.

  2. Pour in the liquor from 1 can of oysters and add the oysters. Boil for 2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Place 2 dozen powdered oyster crackers, 1 tablespoon of butter, salt, and pepper in a soup tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the crackers and serve immediately.

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

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

  3. Milk + oystertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

New milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavor and tender texture after brief boiling.
Oyster crackers
Soak up the hot broth, adding body and a soft, bready texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Avoid boiling the butter in the soup. Milk proteins can curdle when overheated, so adding butter to the hot soup rather than boiling it keeps the broth 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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