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Oyster Soup

A creamy soup made with oysters, stock, butter, flour, cream, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,283 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Remove gills from oysters and scald them in their liquor; cut the oysters in half.

Make the soup

  1. Melt butter in a pan, then stir in flour smoothly.

  2. Gradually add the stock and oyster liquor, then season with pepper, salt, cayenne, mace, and anchovy.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add cream and lemon juice.

  4. Add the oysters and heat until they are hot, then serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 bite of the soup.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, velvety soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky, smooth texture.
White stock or fish stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Stir the flour smoothly into the melted butter. Flour mixed into fat cooks into a roux that thickens evenly; if lumps form or the stock is added too fast, the soup turns lumpy and grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Capersbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, fish, flour, butter, cream, milk, pepper. 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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