Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Oyster Soup

A creamy soup made with oysters, milk, butter, flour, onion, celery, and salt.

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

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 ↓

Cream of Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Scald the milk with the onion and celery in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour together.

  3. Remove the onion and celery from the milk and add the butter-flour mixture.

  4. Stir until the mixture thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Scald the oysters, then press them through a sieve and add to the sauce.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 flavor and body of the soup once pressed into the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavors.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a creamy sauce when cooked with the butter.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture thickens. Flour must be stirred with the butter and hot milk so starch granules swell evenly; stirring prevents lumps and gives a smooth, properly thickened base.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes