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Oyster Soup

A soup made with oysters, cornstarch, milk, white pepper, butter, mace, and water.

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters in cold water, add them to the oyster liquor, and strain.

Cook the oysters

  1. Put the liquor and mace in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove the scum, add the oysters, and cook for about two minutes until plump.

Make the thickened milk

  1. In a separate bowl, cook the flour and cornstarch until smooth and frothy.

  2. Slowly add the hot milk while stirring vigorously, and boil for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters and salt if needed, remove the mace, and 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. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  4. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

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

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, briny body of the soup.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup a smooth, body-rich texture.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and carries its mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Slowly add the hot milk while stirring vigorously. Starch granules clump if they meet liquid too quickly. Adding the milk slowly while stirring disperses the cornstarch evenly so the thickening is smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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