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Vegetable Oyster Soup

A creamy soup made from grated salsify, milk, cream, and flour, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Vegetable Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Remove the outer skin and rootlets from the salsify.

  2. Soak the salsify in cold water for 1 hour.

  3. Grate the salsify using a vegetable grater.

Make the soup

  1. Add the grated salsify to the boiling water and cook slowly until tender.

  2. Stir in the milk and cream.

  3. Mix the flour with a little milk to form a cream, then add it to the soup.

  4. Let the soup boil until it thickens, stirring continuously.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Salsify
Forms the main body of the soup and gives it its mild, oyster-like flavour.
Milk
Adds liquid and creaminess to the soup base.
Thin cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly with a little milk before it goes in, and the soup must boil while stirred. Starch granules hydrate and swell into a thickener only when heated, so lumps form if it is added dry or unstirred.

“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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