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Oyster Soup

A creamy soup made with oysters, veal stock, milk, butter, flour, 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 base

  1. Blanch the oysters without boiling them, then strain and save the liquor.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan, add the flour, and stir over the heat for a few minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Add the oyster liquor, veal stock, and milk; season with salt, peppercorns, cayenne, mace, Harvey sauce, and essence of anchovies.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and let it boil for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Place the oysters in a tureen, add the cream, and pour the boiling soup over them.

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 + 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 flavour and texture of the soup, and their liquor adds savoury depth.
Butter
Carries flavour and, with the flour, forms the roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as a roux with the melted butter.
Veal stock
Forms the savoury liquid base of the soup.
Milk
Adds body and mild sweetness, softening the soup's savoury edge.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel at the end.

The step that matters

Blanch the oysters without boiling them. Boiling toughens oyster flesh and makes it shrink and taste rubbery, so they should only be warmed until the edges curl.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, veal, milk, pepper, sauce. 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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