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Oyster Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 41,516 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the stock for four hours with vegetables to flavor.

  2. Remove gills from oysters.

  3. Discard tendons.

  4. Set aside the soft, fatty part of oysters.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the oyster liquor, gills, and tendons.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Add flour to the butter and stir until smooth.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Add the stock.

  6. Boil for five minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Place the cream in a heated tureen.

  2. Drop the oysters into the soup for half a minute to heat them.

  3. Slowly stir the soup into the cream.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Oyster + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 seafood flavor and the soft, delicate texture of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the finished soup.
Butter
Carries flavor and forms the fat base for the flour thickener.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with the melted butter into a smooth paste.
Ham bone stock
Gives the soup a savory, meaty base and fuller body.

The step that matters

Heating the oysters briefly. Oysters turn tough and shrink when overheated, so they are dropped into the hot soup for only half a minute, just long enough to warm through.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, cream, butter, ham, veal, flour, onion):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, cream, butter, ham, veal, flour, onion. 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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