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Mock Oyster Soup

A creamy soup made with salt codfish, salsify, milk, butter, and flour, served with oyster crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Mock Oyster Soup

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Mock Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Wash the salt codfish.

  2. Simmer gently in water for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the codfish and add salsify to the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in milk, salt, pepper, butter, and flour.

  2. Heat the mixture until it reaches boiling point.

  3. Serve with oyster crackers.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Salt codfish
Gives the broth a savoury, salty flavour that stands in for oysters.
Salsify
Adds a mild, slightly sweet root flavour and soft body to the soup.
Milk
Provides creaminess and a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky texture in the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.

The step that matters

Heating the milk mixture to boiling. Milk can scorch or stick to the bottom of the pot, and flour needs to be heated fully to thicken and lose its raw taste. Stir gently while the soup comes up to the boil.

“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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