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Oyster Soup

A savory soup made with mutton or veal broth, oysters, butter, flour, spices, and cream, served with a French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,557 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Prepare broth using mutton or veal, flavored with onions, mace, and pepper.

  2. Remove gills from oysters.

  3. Simmer oysters in the broth for a few minutes.

  4. Strain the broth.

Make the soup

  1. Add the oysters with their liquor to the broth.

  2. Incorporate a good piece of butter rolled in flour, seasoned with nutmeg and cayenne.

  3. Add ½ cup of rich cream for every hundred oysters.

  4. Simmer gently for 10 to 15 minutes.

  5. Add lemon juice to taste in the tureen.

Serve

  1. Place a French roll in the soup for 5 to 6 minutes before serving.

  2. Remove the roll carefully and place it in the tureen before pouring the soup over it.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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 tender texture of the soup, releasing their liquor into the broth.
Butter and flour
Rolled together and stirred in, they thicken the broth and add richness.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy broth.
Broth of mutton or veal
Forms the savory base that carries the flavors of the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the cream. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils hard, so keeping the soup at a gentle simmer keeps it smooth. Oysters also toughen quickly with strong heat, so gentle cooking keeps them tender.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, pepper, oyster, butter, flour, nutmeg):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Turmericbetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, pepper, oyster, butter, flour, nutmeg. 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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