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Vegetable Oyster Soup

A soup made with salsify, codfish, crackers, butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Vegetable Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the soup

  1. Slice and finely chop the salsify.

  2. Boil the salsify in 4 quarts of water for 3 hours.

  3. Add the codfish and boil for an additional hour.

  4. Boil the remaining ingredients for 30 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Rub the flour and butter together until smooth, then stir into the soup.

  2. Add the crackers and 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Salsify
Forms the main vegetable body and mild, earthy flavor of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the liquid.
Milk
Provides creaminess and a smooth, rich texture.
Crackers
Absorb liquid and add extra body to the soup.
Codfish
Adds a savory, salty depth of flavor to the soup.

The step that matters

Rubbing the flour and butter together before stirring. Raw flour clumps when added directly to hot liquid because its starch outside surfaces hydrates unevenly. Rubbing it with fat first coats the particles so they disperse smoothly and thicken the soup without lumps.

“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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