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Soup

Oysters a LA Mode

A creamy oyster soup with cayenne pepper and corn flour thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Oysters a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Plump the oysters over low heat in their own liquor, but do not let them boil.

  2. Heat the cream in a separate pot and add cayenne pepper.

  3. Pour the oyster liquor into the soup and mix well.

  4. Mix corn flour with a little milk until smooth in a small bowl, then gradually add to the soup while simmering.

  5. Add the heated cream to the soup before serving.

Serve

  1. Place the oysters in a tureen and pour the soup over them before serving.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 flavour and tender texture of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the soup.
Corn flour
Thickens the liquid as it simmers, giving the soup body.

The step that matters

Plump the oysters without boiling. High heat toughens oyster flesh and makes it rubbery, so the oysters should only be warmed gently until their edges curl and plump.

“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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