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Oyster Bisque

A creamy soup made with milk, oysters, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Oyster Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk with the bay leaf, celery, and parsley until scalded.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter.

Add the oysters and serve

  1. Add the oyster juice and chopped oysters just before serving.

  2. Bring to a boil once after adding the oysters.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the bisque its body and smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells when heated, giving the bisque body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and combines with the flour to help thicken the base.
Oysters
Provide the main flavor and tender texture of the bisque.
Oyster juice
Adds a briny, savory depth of flavor to the milk base.

The step that matters

Add the oysters just before serving and boil only once. Oyster protein tightens and toughens with prolonged heat, so extra cooking makes the oysters rubbery and shrunken. Adding them last and bringing the bisque to a boil only once keeps them tender.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, parsley, flour, butter, oyster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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