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Oyster Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the base

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Cut the onion into large pieces and cook with the water and oyster liquor for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture into the hot milk.

  4. Blend the flour with a little cold milk and pour it into the hot milk.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring often.

  2. Add the oysters, salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Cook until the oysters curl at the edges.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and tender texture once cooked until their edges curl.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the soup and carries the oyster flavor.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes creamy rather than watery.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour. Flour must be blended with cold milk first so it disperses without lumps. Starch granules swell and thicken when heated, so adding dry flour directly to hot milk can clump and leave the soup grainy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, milk, flour, butter, pepper. 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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