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
Wet a saucepan with cold water and pour in 2 quarts of milk.
Bring the milk to a boil, then add 2 dozen oysters and 1 pint of oyster liquor, seasoned with salt and pepper.
Dissolve 1 tablespoon of rice flour in a little cold milk and add it to the soup.
Add 1 tablespoon of butter.
Do not let the soup boil again to prevent the oysters from contracting.
Serve
Pour the soup into a tureen.
Taste for seasoning and serve with broken crackers if desired.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,379 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,184 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Flour and butter 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
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of the oysters.
- Oysters
- Provide the main flavour and tender texture of the soup.
- Rice flour
- Thickens the milk slightly so the soup has a fuller body.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
The step that matters
Do not let the soup boil again. Once the oysters are added, boiling makes their proteins tighten, so they shrink and turn tough. Keeping the soup just below boiling keeps the oysters tender.
“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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