Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Soup

A soup made with fresh and tinned oysters, milk, stock, anchovy sauce, white pepper, and thickened with roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters.

  2. Reserve the liquor in a small pan.

  3. Add the liquor from the tin and heat.

  4. Add the fresh oysters to the pan, but do not let them boil to avoid toughness.

  5. Remove the fresh oysters once heated.

  6. Chop the tinned oysters.

  7. Pass the chopped oysters through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Add the sieved tinned oysters to the pan with the stock.

  2. Pour in the boiling milk.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Stir in the anchovy sauce and a little white pepper.

  5. Thicken the soup with the roux.

  6. Add the oysters back to the soup and heat through.

  7. Serve.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Anchovy + white peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main briny, seafood flavour of the soup.
Milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the soup.
White stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the other flavours.
White roux
Thickens the soup and gives it a smooth, velvety texture.
Anchovy sauce
Adds savoury depth and saltiness that complements the oysters.

The step that matters

Keep the fresh oysters from boiling. Prolonged high heat squeezes the proteins in oysters, making them firm and rubbery. Heating them gently only until warmed keeps them tender.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, milk, anchovy, sauce. 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.

More oyster soup recipes

Mock 19White 16Vegetable 8Chicken 3Cream 3 See all 520 →

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes