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Soup

Oyster Soup, Made of the Fish Stock

A soup of oysters simmered in fish stock with a roux of flour and butter, seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and fish work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oyster Soup, Made of the Fish Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the gills from the oysters and set aside.

  2. In a pot, bring the fish stock to a simmer.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a separate pan over low heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Gradually add the hot fish stock to the flour mixture, stirring until it thickens.

  4. Add the oysters to the soup and cook until they are just heated through.

  5. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Oyster + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  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. Oyster + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,582 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, 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 flavour and tender texture of the soup.
Flour
Cooked in butter and whisked into stock, it thickens the soup into a smooth body.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds rich, savoury fat to the soup.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the oysters flavour.

The step that matters

Add the oysters to the soup and cook until they are just heated through.. Oysters are delicate and turn rubbery and shrink when overheated, so they should be added at the end and warmed only until heated through.

“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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