Skip to main content
Main

White Oyster Soup

A soup made from oysters, stale bread, cream, and stock, thickened with arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Oyster and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,545 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

White Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Prepare the oysters by removing the shells and gills.

  2. Boil the stock made from veal, ham, water, herbs, carrots, onions, mace, and peppercorns for 5 hours.

  3. Strain the stock and let it cool, skimming off any fat.

  4. In a small portion of boiling stock, steep the bread for a few minutes, then drain it.

  5. Pound the bread with the oysters until well blended.

  6. Gradually mix in the stock until smooth, then pass through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Heat the mixture in a clean pot, stirring in the boiling cream.

  2. If the soup is not thick enough, mix the arrowroot with cold milk or stock and add it to the soup.

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. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Arrowroot + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + arrowroottop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 body of the soup when pounded smooth.
Bread
Thickens the soup and gives it a smooth, velvety texture when pounded and strained.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the flavour and giving a silky mouthfeel.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup if it remains thin, without making it cloudy.

The step that matters

Pounding the bread with the oysters. The bread must be well blended with the oysters so the soup is smooth. Stale bread that has been steeped absorbs liquid and breaks down into a fine paste, while any lumps left behind would stay in the soup after straining.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, bread, cream, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, bread, cream, pepper. 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