Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Soup, White

A creamy oyster soup made with oysters, butter, flour, milk, veal stock, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Soup, White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Remove gills from oysters and squeeze out the liquor through a colander into the saved oyster liquor.

Make the soup

  1. Make a white roux by melting butter and mixing in flour.

  2. Gradually add milk and veal stock to the roux until thickened.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Stir in the oyster liquor and strain through a colander to remove any solids.

  5. Return the soup to the pot, add the oysters, and heat gently without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve in a soup tureen with fried or toasted bread-dice at the bottom.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 the briny, savoury character of the soup.
Butter
Carries fat for the roux and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the roux with starch so the milk and stock turn into a smooth body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body, softening the savoury notes of the stock.
Veal stock
Contributes savoury depth and meaty backbone to the soup.

The step that matters

Heat the oysters gently without boiling. Oysters toughen and shrink when overheated, and boiling can curdle the milk-based soup, so they should only be warmed through at the end.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, milk, veal, pepper, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes