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Oyster Soup a LA Plessy

A rich oyster soup made with oysters, fish, vegetables, wine, consomme, and thickened with roux and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,057 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Oyster Soup a LA Plessy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Blanch the oysters by boiling them for a few minutes.

  2. Drain the oysters and save the liquor.

  3. Wash the oysters.

  4. Remove the gills and tendons from the oysters.

  5. Place the fat part of the oysters in a basin with their liquor.

  6. Prepare quenelles from the fillets of 3 whitings.

Make the stock

  1. In a small stewpan, combine the bones and trimmings of the whitings, 6 flounders, an eel cut into pieces, parsley roots, carrot, celery, thyme, mace, and peppercorns.

  2. Add 1 pint of French white wine and the oyster liquor.

  3. Boil the mixture briskly for 10 minutes.

  4. Add 6 washed whole anchovies and 3 pints of white consomme.

  5. Simmer gently for 45 minutes.

  6. Strain the stock through a sieve into a stewpan.

Finish the soup

  1. Thicken the stock with white roux.

  2. Set the soup aside to clarify.

  3. Mix in 6 egg yolks before serving.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 of the soup, releasing briny juices into the stock.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the fish stock.
Flounders
Contribute body and savoury flavour to the fish stock as they simmer.
White consomme
Forms the liquid base of the soup, adding savoury depth.
White roux
Thickens the stock, giving it a smoother, fuller body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup, adding richness and a silkier texture when stirred in.

The step that matters

Mix in 6 egg yolks before serving.. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so adding them to a very hot soup can scramble them. Stir them in gradually off the heat, or with a little warm stock first, to keep the soup smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, white wine, parsley, carrot, celery, thyme, egg):

  1. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  2. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  3. Winter savorybetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, white wine, parsley, carrot, celery, thyme, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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