Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Souffle

A baked oyster dish with butter, flour, cream, eggs, anchovy essence, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Oyster Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Blanch the butter and flour in a saucepan.

  2. Add the oyster liquor and cream, stirring until it boils.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in anchovy essence, lemon juice, and cayenne.

Add the oysters and eggs

  1. Chop oysters: cut large ones into quarters and small ones in half.

  2. Fold in the egg yolks and beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a greased dish and bake until set.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour, with the flour forming a thickening roux.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a stable base that holds the soufflé together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the base a smooth, tender texture.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the mixture, while beaten whites trap air to lift the soufflé.
Oysters
Provide the main flavour and a soft, tender texture throughout the soufflé.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Beaten whites hold air bubbles that lift the soufflé as it bakes. Vigorous stirring deflates them, so the soufflé rises poorly and turns dense.

“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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes