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Oyster Soup

A soup made with oysters, crackers, butter, milk, nutmeg, mace, celery, pepper, and toasted bread squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the oysters with cayenne pepper and remove them from the liquor.

  2. Grate and finely roll the crackers, then add them to the liquor with the butter.

Make the soup

  1. Once the crackers dissolve, add the milk, nutmeg, mace, and celery.

  2. Season to taste with pepper and mix everything together.

  3. Cover and cook over low heat until it boils.

  4. Add the oysters and boil again until they are cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen with toasted bread squares.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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, briny body of the soup.
Crackers
Dissolve into the liquid to thicken the soup and give it body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the texture.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base and adds gentle sweetness and softness.
Celery
Adds a vegetal, aromatic note that balances the richness.

The step that matters

Add the oysters and boil again until they are cooked through. Oysters turn firm and rubbery when overcooked, so they should be added near the end and heated only until just cooked through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper, butter, milk, nutmeg, celery, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, butter, milk, nutmeg, celery, bread. 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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