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Oyster Soup

A simple oyster soup made with oysters, milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the oysters

  1. Place the oysters in a pot with their own liquor.

  2. Gently simmer until their edges ruffle.

Add the milk

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler until it reaches the scalding point.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the oysters.

  3. Let the soup stand for one minute.

  4. Skim the soup well with a fine skimmer.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Oyster + milktop 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and tender bite of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the soup and carries the oyster flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Gently simmer the oysters until their edges ruffle. Oysters turn firm and rubbery when overcooked, so they should be heated only until the edges curl. Gentle heat keeps them tender and juicy.

“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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