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White Oyster Soup

A soup made from oysters, veal stock, cream, and seasonings, thickened with arrow‑root or butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters carefully and pour their liquor into a bowl, straining it.

  2. Rinse the oysters in their liquor and remove the gills.

  3. Strain the liquor again through a fine sieve and pour it back over the oysters.

Make the stock

  1. Simmer the gills in 2 quarts of veal stock for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Heat the stock, flavor it with mace and cayenne, and strain it from the gills.

Finish and serve

  1. Gently heat the oysters in their liquor without boiling.

  2. Pour the liquor into the soup and add 1 pint of boiling cream.

  3. If thickening is needed, mix 1.5 ounces of arrow-root with a little milk or cream and stir it into the stock, or blend 4 ounces of butter with 3 ounces of flour.

  4. Place the oysters in a tureen, ladle the soup over them, and serve immediately.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

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

  5. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 texture of the soup.
Veal stock
Forms the savory liquid base that carries the soup's flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the soup.
Arrow-root
Thickens the stock to give the soup a smooth, silky body.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the stock and adds richness.

The step that matters

Gently heat the oysters without boiling. Boiling toughens oyster flesh and makes it shrink and turn rubbery, so the oysters should be heated only until warmed through.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, veal, cream, butter, flour. 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.

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