Skip to main content

Imitation Oyster Soup

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,099 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Imitation Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Blanch the almonds and pound them to a paste with a little water.

  2. Rub the almond paste with the cream or milk through a cloth or sieve.

  3. Mix the anchovy sauce, mushroom ketchup, vinegar, white wine, grated nutmeg, beaten egg yolks, and arrowroot or flour.

  4. Add this mixture to the consommé along with the almond cream.

  5. Bring the whole mixture to a boil and season with pepper and a little mace.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mushroom + white winetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,704 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Vinegar + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, anchovy, sauce, mushroom, ketchup, vinegar, white wine):

  1. Beansbetter flavor fit
  2. Peasbetter flavor fit
  3. Walnutbetter flavor fit
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, anchovy, sauce, mushroom, ketchup, vinegar, white wine. 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).

More oyster soup recipes

Mock 19White 16Vegetable 8Chicken 3Cream 3 See all 520 →

You might also like

Almond SoupAlmond Soup60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesArrowroot GruelArrowroot Gruel37 recipesAlmond SaladAlmond Salad6 recipes