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Soup

Cream of Oyster Soup

A creamy soup made with oysters, butter, flour, milk, and oyster liquor, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cream of Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Drain the oysters and place them in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the oysters in the saucepan to a boil.

  3. Drain and save the oyster liquor.

Make the roux and milk base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, add the flour, and cook for 2 minutes.

  2. Slowly add the milk and bring to a boil.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the oyster liquor and oysters, then season with salt and pepper.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries flavour into the roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter into a roux.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its body.
Oysters
Provide the main flavour and a tender texture to the soup.
Oyster liquor
Adds a briny, concentrated oyster flavour to the milk base.

The step that matters

Slowly add the milk to the roux. Adding milk gradually while stirring lets the flour and butter blend smoothly into the liquid. Adding it all at once can leave lumps, because starch granules clump before they can disperse and thicken evenly.

“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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