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Soup

Oyster Plant Soup

A soup made from oyster plant, milk, butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Plant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape and clean the oyster plant.

  2. Cut the cleaned oyster plant into ½-inch pieces.

  3. Soak the pieces in salt water for 15 minutes.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil the oyster plant in enough water to cover until tender.

  2. In a separate pot, heat 1 quart of milk without discarding the water from the oyster plant.

  3. Add butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt to the milk and bring to a boil.

  4. If desired, thicken the soup with cracker meal.

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

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

  3. Milk + oystertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Oyster plant
The main vegetable; boiling softens it until tender, giving the soup its body.
Milk
Forms the creamy base, adding richness and a smooth, mild body to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat, which carries flavor and gives the soup a rounder, richer mouthfeel.
Cracker meal
Starch that absorbs liquid and thickens the soup when stirred in.

The step that matters

Bringing the milk to a boil. Milk scorches on the bottom of the pot and can boil over quickly. Stirring while it heats keeps the proteins from sticking and burning, which would give the soup an off, scorched taste.

“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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