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Oyster Soup

A soup made from veal, plaice, oysters, milk, cream, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the veal stock

  1. Add 1 quart of cold water, veal cut into small pieces, onion, and bay leaf to a pot.

  2. Simmer gently for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture and let cool to remove fat.

Make the fish stock

  1. Fillet the plaice and remove the black skin.

  2. Simmer the plaice in 1 quart of cold water for about 1 hour until reduced to shreds.

  3. Rub the cooked plaice through a fine sieve.

  4. Simmer the beards of the oysters in 4 pints of fish stock.

  5. Add oyster liquor.

  6. Strain the oysters and set aside.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the veal stock and fish stock, and bring to a boil.

  2. Melt butter in a stewpan.

  3. Stir in flour and cook for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Pour in hot stock and stir until it boils.

  5. Add milk, oysters, oyster liquor, anchovy essence, and season to taste.

  6. If oysters are large, cut them in halves and add just before serving without cooking.

  7. Stir in cream just before serving.

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. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,184 recipes

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

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

Butter
Enriches the roux and gives the soup a rich, rounded flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, velvety base.
Veal knuckle
Adds gelatin and savoury body to the stock.
Oysters
Supply the main briny, sea-like flavour of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Milk
Lightens the base and adds mild sweetness and body.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters. Oysters toughen and shrink when overcooked, so large ones are halved and added just before serving, with cream stirred in at the end, to keep them tender and the soup smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Shallotabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Asparagusabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, milk, cream, oyster, anchovy. 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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