Why it works: Fish and oyster work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 496 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Oyster Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the base
Beat the yolks of 10 hard-boiled eggs and the hard part of 2 quarts of oysters in a mortar.
Add the mixture to 2 quarts of fish stock and simmer for 30 minutes.
Strain the soup and return it to the pot with the cleaned oysters.
Simmer for 5 minutes.
Finish and serve
Beat 6 raw egg yolks in a separate bowl and add them to the soup.
Stir continuously on the side of the fire until thick and smooth, but do not let it boil.
Serve immediately.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together496 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together4,103 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together2,782 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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, savoury flavour of the soup.
- Hard-boiled egg yolks
- Add body and a creamy, thickening richness to the broth.
- Raw egg yolks
- Thicken the soup gently when stirred in off the boil, adding smoothness and richness.
- Fish stock
- Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
The step that matters
Adding the raw egg yolks. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so the soup must be stirred constantly over gentle heat and kept below boiling. Boiling can curdle the yolks and leave the soup grainy instead of smooth and thick.
“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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